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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

My Lords, I do not think we should agree to this Motion without further discussion. Given the history of the Bill, which was massively amended in another place, and the raft of amendments which the Government have tabled to the Bill as introduced into this House, I do not think we should accept this Motion without once again asking whether we really need this Bill. The question was asked several times at Second Reading on 13 June, but—and I say this in all kindness—in his winding-up speech the Minister failed to convince many of your Lordships of the case he was seeking to make. For instance, the noble Lord, Lord Garden, asked, "““why can current legislation not be used?—[Official Report, 13/6/06; col. 187.]" When the Minister came to answer that question, the first thing he stressed—and I think it is important to notice what he gave the most importance to—was that it would help, "““to create a regulatory environment—the culture to which the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, referred””.—[Official Report, 13/6/06; col. 188.]" My noble friend, of course, was referring to the culture in Whitehall departments, which the Minister acknowledged seemed to be reluctant to engage in deregulation. But if departments are unwilling to deregulate—if the culture does indeed need to be changed—surely to goodness it is the job of the Ministers who head the departments to make sure that change is achieved. What is there in this Bill that is supposed, miraculously, to convert officials to embrace the spirit of deregulation? Yes, it provides some new definitions, for example, of the burdens that can be removed or reduced by order. So one goes on to ask, as several noble Lords did on Second Reading, including the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, why cannot the 2001 Act be amended, "““to make it a little less complex and technical?””—[Official Report, 13/6/06; col. 189.]" The noble Lord got no answer either, except that the Minister riposted by inviting him to use the Committee stage to ““have a go””, as he put it, at drafting amendments that simplified things. It may be that the noble Lord’s amendments, of which there are many, would do that. We now have this raft of new amendments, tabled by the Government in this House. For instance, Clause 3 contains the power to implement Law Commission reports by order, to which the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, said at col. 186, he remained ““wedded””. He remained wedded in the letter he wrote to us, which I shall refer to in a moment. But we now see, looking at the Marshalled List, that Clause 3 is to be removed. The criteria written into the Bill to govern the use of the veto by committees of either House are to be removed. These are changes which I am sure the House will welcome, but why were those criteria in the Bill in the first place? Is this not evidence, if evidence were needed, that the Government are simply making up this Bill as they go along? When this Bill started its life in another place, it contained powers to legislate by order that were so sweeping and all-embracing that it attracted the sobriquet the ““Abolition of Parliament”” Bill. Mercifully, most of those powers were withdrawn in that House, so it was a radically different and far more modest measure that came to this House. But here we go again: the Marshalled List contains upward of 30 government amendments and proposals for the removal of two entire clauses. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, was kind enough to send a number of us a letter which covered the points that had been raised at Second Reading. It is no fewer than nine foolscap pages long, plus an annex—let me say at once that I make no criticism of that: anything the Government can do to explain what they are trying to achieve must be an advantage. However, in the letter, the Minister once again tried to spell out why we needed the Bill rather than a much shorter measure amending the 2001 Act. He argued that the differences between the order-making powers in the Bill and in the 2001 Act, "““are sufficiently significant to merit more than mere amendment of the 2001 Act””." But I am driven to ask, if the Government had not originally attempted to introduce their far more drastic order-making power and to legislate by what was called the ““Abolition of Parliament Act””, whether they would not then have preferred to make the amendments in the form of a much shorter, simpler Bill, amending the 2001 Act. Would that not, even now, be a better course? Here we are, into July, with a very heavy legislative programme before us. Would it really not be wiser to recognise that this Bill, which in its present form still needs further to be amended, as witness the number of amendments on the Marshalled List, should be withdrawn before we waste any more time on it? Ministers could then really work out what they want to achieve and come back to the House in October with a simple amending Bill. I would hazard a guess that this might gain parliamentary approval quite quickly. Most of us are agreed on what needs to be done to speed up the process of deregulation. That would be a very much better way of doing it than starting to wade through this Committee now.