Draft Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008 (Amendment to Schedule 3) (England) Order 2021

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2021 General Committees

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

Who designates a primary authority?

[Paul Scully]

That is a good question, and I will come back to it in a second. We have worked together to come to this point, and businesses support what we are doing here. The regulation has been a long time in the making. Local authorities face a lot of challenges in interpreting at pace the regulations made under part 2A to reduce the impact of the covid-19 pandemic, as well as the associated burdens experienced by businesses in trying to comply with all of that. Business stakeholders, local authorities and trade associations have offered strong support for bringing part 2A within the scope of the scheme. In November 2020, the British Retail Consortium, which represents more than 170 major retailers, wrote to the then Business Secretary—now the COP26 President —to request that part 2A be brought within scope. The context for that request was that, in 2020, around 46,000 businesses with an existing primary authority partnership received informal advice on coronavirus regulations made under part 2A.