---

Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

My Lords, with his characteristic perspicacity the noble Lord, Lord Richard, has put his finger on the point. But the answer to his point is not the one that he gave to his own question. When this Bill started its life in another place, it had two features which distinguished it from the 2001 Bill. The first was that it sought to remove the distinction between primary and secondary legislation. It was described by the fourth estate as the Bill to abolish Parliament. Fortunately, pressure from the fourth estate and a leaked letter from the government Chief Whip, which we all read with great interest, in combination forced the Government to think again in another place. But since Second Reading a second big change has been made to the Bill: the Government have decided to remove Clause 3. If Clause 3 had remained in the Bill, it would, indeed, have been an important distinction between this legislation and the 2001 Bill because Clause 3 sought to establish a completely separate system for driving Law Commission proposals through Parliament. The Government have now decided—in my submission, wisely—to withdraw Clause 3. So the question that my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding is posing to the Government today is: given that we have removed all the features of the Bill which might otherwise have rendered it an ““Abolition of Parliament”” Bill, and given that we have now removed the Law Commission features, what is left in this legislation which distinguishes it from the 2001 Bill? That is the difference between Second Reading and today. It is a well merited question. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee report, as we all know, stated that the main inhibition from making a deregulatory order is not the definition of ““burden”” in the 2001 Bill—a definition largely repeated in this Bill—or, more widely, parliamentary processes themselves, but the failure of government Ministers to put deregulation high enough on their agenda to make it work. That is said in terms in the report. So, with great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Richard, the intervention of my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding was exactly to the point. We need an answer from the Government.