Watchdogs (Industry and Regulators Committee Report)

Viscount Chandos Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Chandos (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Hollick on securing this debate and his outstanding introduction. This report, Who Watches the Watchdogs?, is the crowning glory of his term as the inaugural chair of the Industry and Regulators Committee, to whose establishment he did much to contribute. The standing of the committee, which is recognised by the Institute for Government, as I shall refer to later, owes much to his term as chair. Like the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Cromwell, I was proud to be a member of the committee at the time of this inquiry, and continue to be a member under the excellent chairmanship of my noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton.

Who among us has not felt frustration at the burden or impact of regulation, whether as consumers or in our business or professional lives? That, I suggest, is the result of bad regulation, not the principle of regulation, and the purpose of the committee’s inquiry was to identify ways in which regulation could be made consistently better. Further, like the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, I believe that good regulation is a key determinant of the success of a dynamic social market economy. One of the most striking pieces of evidence that the committee heard was from Virginia Acha of the pharmaceutical group MSD. She argued that, if you look around the world, there is no country in which there is a thriving life sciences industry that does not have a strong pharmaceutical regulator.

What is true for life sciences is true for other industries and sectors, even or particularly those that are complex and/or fast changing. For that reason, I disagreed with the previous Conservative Government’s policy of delaying overarching regulation of AI and look forward to the Labour Government introducing legislation as soon as possible, drawing where appropriate, I hope, on the Private Member’s Bill introduced in the previous Parliament by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond.

The most significant of the many good recommendations in the committee’s report is the establishment of an office for regulatory performance to improve Parliament’s ability to oversee regulators and hold them to account. As my noble friend Lord Hollick also noted, two months after the report was published, the Institute for Government published its own valuable report on the specific issue of the parliamentary scrutiny of regulators. It proposed a regulatory oversight support unit as its solution to the same challenges that the committee set out to address through the office for regulatory performance, as well as suggesting that the committee should seek to involve members of the House of Commons in its proceedings on a regular basis. This last suggestion feels to me to be way beyond my pay grade, although I would welcome it.

On the difference between the committee’s advocacy of the office for regulatory performance and the Institute for Government’s recommendation of a regulatory oversight support unit, I am torn between a loyalty towards the committee of which I am a member and feeling that the pride of co-authorship should not be allowed to get in the way of achieving, as soon as possible, a practicable and cost-effective solution. Can my noble friend the Minister say whether the Government will, alongside the proposed establishment of the office for regulatory performance, also explore, with both Houses of Parliament, the best way to strengthen Parliament’s scrutiny and holding to account of regulators, drawing on the work of both the Industry and Regulators Committee and the Institute for Government?