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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

There is good sense in the amendments. If there is no ulterior purpose in the legislation then the words ““which he considers”” are otiose. The noble Lord, Lord Borrie, and I were partners—in a purely professional sense—for a couple of years, while he was director-general of the Office of Fair Trading and I was Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Of course, we had discussions about regulatory matters and things of that kind. I only ever disagreed with one of his recommendations, over the trifling matter of the market in condensed milk, which he thought rather more important than I did. My point is that on one occasion one of his recommendations to me was so compelling and obvious—indeed, I had come to the identical conclusion some time before—that I said to my officials, ““That’s it then; we’ll say today that we agree with the director-general””. ““No,”” said my private secretary, ““we’d best not do that because somebody might bring an action for judicial review on the grounds that you hadn’t considered it for long enough””. So arcane matters are involved, but the point of that story is that it seems to me that the legislation that gives power to a Minister to do certain things assumes that he will use that power in a considered way. Therefore, these words are at best otiose and, if not, possibly harmful.