Lord Addington (LD)

My Lords, I will make some brief comments. As I read the Bill, the Secretary of State providing some finance might be necessary, particularly in starting up. One of the things we do not want is an underresourced regulator blundering around making mistakes. A bad regulator is the worst outcome you can have, and that is usually because it lacks resources. When the Minister responds, can she give us some idea about when the power to give extra money would be used? This being done badly would be the worst result. When the noble Lord, Lord Markham, talked about regulation, I am afraid I kept thinking about Fulham and Al Fayed. Are your internal control structures right? Are you doing something wrong? The damage that could be done by bad organisation immediately catches in the back of my throat. The regulation will not be straightforwardly financial; it is also about reporting structures, the care of your workforce, et cetera. Surely that should be covered by the Bill. These are questions about where you draw the line. If we have a regulator, does it regulate the whole thing? I think it has to; it cannot be just financial. If these are socially important structures—this is what we keep coming back to—we have to look at this question. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, has a point about the costs involved. I hope that we will get an answer when the Minister responds—at least a rough ballpark figure—because it will clarify what we will do. Those of us who approved the idea of a regulator think that it has to be properly resourced and that it has to cover the whole thing. I hope that the Minister can give us a little more guidance about what will happen and what the Government’s thinking is at this point, because they should have an answer by now.