Contribution
My Lords, taken together, this group of amendments focuses on the question of how the new fixed penalty notice regime will operate in practice, how enforcement will be resourced and how local authorities will be supported in carrying out their duties under the Bill. Those are all important themes.
Amendment 74 in the name of my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister proposes a stepped approach to fixed penalty notices reflecting the number of times a person has been issued with a notice. That makes a lot of sense to me. The first time somebody commits an offence should surely be treated differently from the fourth or fifth time. I hope that enforcement officials will want to do this anyway, but such an approach would help strike a balance between giving people the benefit of the doubt—particularly as this will be, at the beginning, a complex new framework of rules—and ensuring that repeated non-compliance is dealt with properly.
That spirit of proportion and fairness also underpins Amendment 77, which would give local enforcement authorities the discretion to issue a formal warning notice to first-time offenders in lieu of a fixed penalty. I hope that the Minister will recognise the constructive intent behind both proposals.
I turn to the series of amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Lansley, which seek to ensure that the proceeds of fixed penalty notices arising from offences under Clauses 17 and 20 are used to support trading standards teams directly, rather than being absorbed into the Consolidated Fund. Like my noble friend, I can see no real reason why the proceeds of fixed penalty notices arising from those breaches should not be treated in exactly the same way as the proceeds of other fixed penalty notices or fines. Trading standards officers are at the forefront of enforcing the Bill’s provisions.
There is, perhaps, a debate to be had about whether hypothecation along those lines creates an incentive for enforcement officers not to exercise the kind of discretion favoured by my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister. However—I admit that this is entirely guesswork on my part; I hope the Minister can illuminate us further— I do not think we should expect the yield from fixed penalty notices to be all that great in the scheme of things. This means that the incentive for overzealousness is likely to be more theoretical than real, so on balance I can identify with my noble friend’s argument that the resources generated by enforcement officers through their activity should be reinvested to strengthen their own capacity.
Amendments 81 and 83 from the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, would instead direct the revenue from fixed penalty notices towards local public health projects. This idea has considerable merit. There are some practical considerations because such a funding stream would, by definition, be inherently unreliable—and, in the context of a local authority budget, it would probably be very small beer—but, in any case, as the noble Baroness said, we hope that the number of penalty notices issued under this part of the Bill will start at a low level then decline even further as we go along.
Nevertheless, the noble Baroness asked an important question about how enforcement and public health objectives can be more closely aligned. I would be grateful if the Minister could set out how the Government see the relationship between enforcement activity and public health outcomes—specifically, how enforcement might be used not only to punish but to deter and to prevent the behaviours that lead to such offences in the first place. If the Minister can convincingly join the dots, as it were, I will have a better basis for assessing the merits of the noble Baroness’s amendment.
Finally, I turn to Amendment 204 tabled by my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister. This is a welcome and sensible amendment. It highlights the central role of local authorities in delivering and enforcing the provisions of the Bill. It is no secret that local authorities are already under significant financial strain, as has been said, and yet this Bill leans heavily on them for its success. I think it is fair that they are given certainty that the additional duties and regulations imposed on them will not leave them further out of pocket. With that, I look forward to what the Minister has to say.