Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)

I look forward to her noble friend the Minister’s response to it, if she feels she has anything to add to it in this group. The debates that we have had on this group, which concerns reporting requirements, cast my mind back to the debates we had during the passage of the Online Safety Bill on testing the duties for Ofcom to report back on how it would operate the new regulatory regime that the Act set up. My noble friend Lord Ranger of Northwood talked about future-proofing and emerging technologies, and this is an opportunity, through the reporting, to make sure that the changing technology and new areas of work are not just in the mind of the regulator but brought back before Parliament for some consideration. My noble friend Lady Brady—I pay tribute to her being here for the consideration of the Bill, particularly this evening—described the first-mover disadvantage. Notwithstanding the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, mentioned about the Italian and Spanish legislation—and I will certainly look at the extent to which that has lessons for us—what we are doing here is on a scale not done by any other jurisdiction. We want to make sure, as we are doing it, that it is working and that it is brought back before Parliament for proper consideration. I am grateful to noble Lords who have brought amendments in this group and spoken to them. My Amendment 121 in this group is simple and technical. The Bill states that the regulator “must arrange for a copy of every report under this section to be laid before Parliament by the Secretary of State”. The wording of the amendment and the original wording of the Bill may seem very similar, but the substantive difference here is that we think that the duty should fall on the Secretary of State to lay the report before Parliament, not on the regulator. The Secretary of State is directly answerable to Parliament, whereas the independent football regulator, at least in the way that the Bill currently envisages it, is not. Surely it is therefore the Secretary of State’s responsibility to ensure that Parliament is fully informed of the actions of the regulator and to present the relevant documents to Parliament for scrutiny. That would not be interfering with the regulator’s independence. Ministers already do this on behalf of other independent regulators: they are not carrying out the regulation but they bring documents before Parliament on the regulators’ behalf. Indeed, they are often asked about the way that regulation works, in addition to the power of Select Committees to call people who work at the regulators directly before them. My amendment would also standardise the wording of the Bill. For example, Clause 11(6) states: “The Secretary of State must lay any football governance statement, or any revised statement, published under this section before Parliament”, and Clause 13(6) states: “The Secretary of State must lay any guidance, or revised guidance, published under this section before Parliament”. If the Bill envisages elsewhere that the onus is on the Secretary of State to lay documents before Parliament, I do not understand why it does not do so also in Clause 14. I am curious to probe the logic in the drafting to see why there is that discrepancy and whether we ought to change it.