Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [Lords]

I beg to move amendment No. 8, page 16,  line 43, leave out subsection (4). The CBI has significant concerns relating to the protection of commercially sensitive information under the Bill. Under clause 24, the NCC is given wide-ranging powers to obtain information from a number of bodies, including the Office of Fair Trading and various sectoral regulators, as well as businesses. The only limitation seems to be that the information must be required for the purposes of exercising the council’s functions. I am sure that the House can begin to see that the purpose of the amendment is to protect sensitive commercial information that has been demanded from a company under the powers in the Bill from reaching the public domain and thus, perhaps, some commercial competitors. The provisions in the Bill on disclosure of such information are contained in clause 29 and are complex. They are linked to part 9 of the Enterprise Act 2002, which includes clear safeguards against the release of consumer and competition information which has been provided to public authorities. Such safeguards were seen as essential in building business support for, and confidence in, the new enforcement regime that was established under 2002 Act. That legislation struck a careful balance between the need for enforcement authorities to seek and obtain sensitive information in the effective discharge of their functions while protecting commercial information from disclosure except under specific and deliberately narrow gateways. The council will need to have regard to the considerations in section 244 of the 2002 Act before disclosure. Those include the need to exclude from disclosure, as far as is practicable, commercial information which the authority thinks might significantly harm the company’s legitimate business interests. However, the underlying presumption against disclosure under part 9 will not, by virtue of clause 29(4), apply to the NCC. We do not understand the justification for not applying that presumption, which is deemed necessary to prevent the release of business information by public authorities, to the council. There is a risk that commercially sensitive information could find its way into the public domain and thus to competitors. The amendment would ensure that part 9 safeguards applied to the new NCC.