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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

My Lords, I strongly support my noble friend Lord Jenkin, because I have an extraordinarily strong feeling, which I expressed at Second Reading but which needs to be expressed again, that giving any power to Ministers ever to amend primary legislation must be a bad thing, even if it is for anodyne and sensible purposes such as making regulation better. It is incredibly dangerous to give any Ministers that power. Let us reasonably assume that, on this issue, this Government are completely and utterly virgin pure, that they are a Government who, we know, are driven solely by the best of motives, that they are a Government who never put a foot wrong and never would dream of amending a Bill badly if they had the power. Let us for the sake of argument make that assumption. I do not trust any other Government, ever, to have that power, be they led by the right honourable Member for Witney, be they led by some as yet unborn child. I do not trust any Government, except possibly this one, to behave like that. So we have to be extremely careful about ever giving Ministers this power. Is it not obvious beyond peradventure that over-regulation arises from regulation, and regulation arises from the powers given to Ministers in primary legislation, so that over-regulation can and should be cured by re-regulation? In other words, let us say that fishing for snails in the River Wey is regulated, deriving the ministerial power of regulation from some agricultural Act. Going back to the agricultural Act containing the power for the Minister to make an order, the Minister sees that the order is wrong and changes the regulation. Surely, this matter is being looked at in an intellectually sloppy way. We say ““over-regulation”” and immediately we rush to the statute book. Over-regulation can and should be cured by proper attention to detail and making sure that regulations which have arisen out of primary legislation are properly drafted and enforced. So do we actually need the Bill? That is the point that I hope my noble friend Lord Jenkin is making.