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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

My Lords, I took over responsibility for better regulation in 2001, as Minister for the Cabinet Office, just as the Regulatory Reform Act came into force. I recall the great enthusiasm with which we looked forward to the effects of the regulatory reform orders. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Desai, and the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, so eloquently said, the reality was sadly different from what we expected, despite all the effort that was put into the matter. The noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, referred to an average of 571 days being taken in this regard. The great sugar beet saga was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Desai. I believe that legislation on births, deaths and marriages was also an issue. The delay over relatively trivial matters eventually persuaded departments that the relevant effort was not worth while. That would be very sad if it were the conclusion; it was obviously made after I left the Government in 2003. It is important to try to keep these matters within the perspective that the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover, introduced when he talked about the 1994 Act. The description he gave of the consultation that went on with business was exactly the way to proceed at that time. Business and others would have wished the Government well in their pursuit of more effective regulation, but those hopes too in 1994 were dashed. Michael Howard said that the Conservatives were less effective at deregulating than they should have been. Michael Portillo said that the Conservatives,"““were rather notable regulators. We passed volumes of new rules and laws interfering with almost every aspect of business and social life””." Angela Browning said, after spending three years as a Minister under the Conservative Government, who tried to reduce regulation in business, that they would be the first to say that they did not do very well. Kenneth Clarke said:"““We kept trying, we never really succeeded””." I have every sympathy with those Conservative Ministers given my own experience in Government, but I am sure that positive advances were made by that Conservative Government and we tried to build on them. We should give credit for the advances that have been made. Therefore, it is wrong to put emphasis on the number of statutory instruments. More than 90 per cent of those instruments have almost no relation at all to business—in fact, a very small percentage would affect business. Therefore, that is a misleading indicator of how well we are doing. It would be better to look at the advances made by the Better Regulation Task Force. The noble Lord, Lord Haskins, is present. Everyone who has looked at this area in detail will give credit to the foundation work that he did, and to the work of Sir David Arculus in carrying forward the difficult task of better regulation. I say from a government perspective that I as a Minister was left in no doubt of the very high priority accorded to this matter by both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. We had a regulatory reform action plan—I am sure that it was rather similar to that described by the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury—of which we managed to implement about 400 measures. Like the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, I have spent most of my life in the private sector. When I asked for specifics of the problems that business faced, I had hoped for a better response than the one which I eventually received. It was very difficult to get businesses to come forward with specifics that we could address. I notice that the new chairman of the Better Regulation Commission, Rick Haythornthwaite, makes the same complaint. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said that there was a suspicion that complexity was welcomed by some large companies as it constituted an entry barrier. I have never come across that in my business experience. However, I share the disappointment of others that business has not been more active in this debate. Therefore, I welcome the role played by the CBI and John Cridland in insisting that your Lordships and Parliament do not lose sight of the intended outcomes to try to reduce the regulatory burden on business. The regulatory burden will be helped by the work being done following the Hampton report on the reduction of inspection regimes. Particularly coming from a background in the media, I have been impressed by Ofcom’s role as a super-regulator. The two FSAs—finance and food—have also been impressive in what they have begun to do. The reductions that are following already are pretty impressive. Britain, in giving the lead that it has built up over the past couple of decades in this area, has been able to influence Europe. Our regulatory impact assessment regime, while in no sense yet fully satisfactory, at least is far in advance of anything that we can see elsewhere in the EU. I notice that Commissioner Verheugen has adopted a number of British proposals and is trying to push those through. The Dutch experience, which was examined by the Better Regulation Task Force, was interesting too. The Dutch reckoned that about 3.6 per cent of GDP went on an administrative burden. In British terms, that would be a very large amount of money. I welcomed from the Back Benches the action plan put forward by the Chancellor in the Budget in 2005 to get departments to introduce simplification plans, which we hope will in implementation save us about 1 per cent of GDP. I will leave a lot of the constitutional questions to the lawyers, who are far better versed in these matters than I am but, again from my ministerial experience, I particularly appreciated the chairmanship of the committees both here and in another place that dealt with regulatory matters. The noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, was particularly helpful to me as a Minister. I wonder whether there might be a Joint Committee to replace those committees, which would have the resources and the authority to try to drive through the simplifications that we all need. Under the action plan for better regulation, measuring and reducing burdens, lighter risk-based inspection, streamlining inspectorates to cut down on repeat requests, and better regulation in Europe are all under way. I hope that what can be achieved under this plan will build on the efforts of this Government and Governments past in what is surely a shared endeavour. Certainly, business would be looking for better regulation and less of it.