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Government Regulation

There is a contradiction at the heart of the Minister’s speech. He spent most of the time talking about the Government’s excellent record on regulation and then went on to suggest that they were about to embark on the ““most radical reform programme”” to deregulate. Proposing such a programme is a tacit admission that there is something wrong. The motion is something of a scatter-gun in its approach, ranging from a call to the Government for proposals that free professionals in schools and hospitals to the case for cutting controls over local government and to measures that will allow business to compete with rivals in Asia and the US. I can just about see a common thread, and I accept that the motion raises serious issues. The sentiments it expresses are broadly shared by the Liberal Democrats, so we will support it. The Government amendment smacks of complacency and endorses an approach by which schools, hospitals and councils have to win freedom from the control of central Government. We reject that approach. We will never break the dependency culture of an overcentralised state in that way. Their approach says, ““You do precisely what we in central Government want you to do, and we will then give you strictly controlled limited freedoms.”” That earned autonomy is not localism as we understand it. We want a much greater, more genuine decentralisation of power. On business regulation, it is worth reminding ourselves that a modern, well functioning market economy depends on the rule of law for its success. The new democracies in eastern Europe, many of which have built remarkably successful economies, had to develop those rules quickly as they escaped from the clutches of communism. Rules are necessary in particular to safeguard and protect employees from unacceptable exploitation. It is worth remembering that Conservative Governments as well as Labour Governments have legislated to outlaw discrimination in the workplace.