Member

Another concern, expressed perhaps from a different perspective by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, is whether the Environment Agency has the resources to monitor compliance with these regulations. The more we regulate, the more compliance costs, and that is a burden on all of society. Are there opportunities within enforcement of these regulations to introduce more technological and potentially lower-cost solutions to compliance rather than just human resources? The businesses we are discussing here all have enterprise resource planning systems or till registers, and electronic data, so it should be possible to harness some of the technologies now available to reduce these compliance costs. I look forward to the Minister’s response.