---

Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

moved Amendment No. 5: Page 1, line 7, leave out second ““or”” and insert ““and”” The noble Baroness said: The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that the net effect of any order made under this clause would be to reduce the overall burden of any piece of legislation. At present, a Minister could introduce a measure to reduce the burden on one person but in theory in doing so could raise the overall burden on several others. The Minister in another place indicated that the, "““new clause … emphasises the reduction in the overall burden””.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/5/06; col. 723.]" But he did not give a cast-iron guarantee that Clause 1 could not be used to increase the overall burden. Emphasis is one thing, but we need a guarantee. As the Bill stands, the Minister can say that he wants to remove a burden even if there is an increase in overall burdens—and that cannot be right. That situation may well be unlikely, but the potential is there. I am sure that the Government would like to see the overall effect of any order under this clause being deregulatory and I had hoped that the difference between us on this point was essentially a matter of the drafting of subsection (2). But I fear that the letter that I received from the Minister last week indicates that the contrary is the case. We accept that in introducing an order some burdens might need to be shifted on to others; indeed, that is what the Minister accepted in another place when he said that, "““it is possible for the burden on some to go up as a new deregulatory process comes into being””.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/5/06; col. 783.]" In the letter that the Minister in this place has sent me, for which I am extremely grateful, he confirmed that flexibility, explaining that, "““removing or reducing a burden from one person may increase the burdens upon others, so the first alternative could permit an overall increase on persons as a whole, for example where a regulatory regime is being placed on a risk basis costs on low-risk businesses would go down, whilst costs on high risk business may go up””." But that should not preclude a guarantee written into the Bill that the net overall effect of any deregulatory order is to reduce the overall burden. The clear exposition of this contained in the letter that I received means that the Bill is not necessarily deregulatory at all. In fact, it could be quite the opposite. I beg to move.