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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, is certainly ““sporting””; there is no doubt about that. It has probably led to a bit of grief on the Front Bench opposite, because there is clearly a sharp difference of opinion. The 1972 Act was enacted not by a Labour Government but by a Conservative Government. I am always pleased to see that the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, has not changed in his general scepticism of all things European. It is refreshing to have a distinct view expressed in this Committee, and the noble Lord does it very well indeed. I have been invited to comment on the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. Unless the noble Lord is not going to move it, I think that we should save that debate until later. But there is not much to choose between the comments and propositions of the noble Lords, Lord Waddington and Lord Tebbit. They might be acting in concert, and that is fair enough. The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, made one point to which I wanted to respond. He reflected on my comments at Second Reading and in the debate on European regulation inspired a while ago by the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell. We are proud of our role in encouraging a deregulatory approach by the EU. The EU is perhaps in some respects a bit behind the UK in attempting to deregulate. That is not the case for all EU states. Some are perhaps a bit more advanced, but most are behind us. They are now recognising that we have a robust approach. I reject the allegation that we gold-plate EU regulations because that is not our intention at all. The power to remove or reduce burdens should certainly be used to remove gold-plating, and the Davidson review is currently considering evidence about gold-plating. That review will report later this year, and, if appropriate, the Government will use powers in this and other legislation to ensure that we do not gold-plate, because that is not what we want to achieve. As to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, I wonder whether he really wishes to limit the order-making power in Clause 1 to remove and reduce only those burdens resulting from legislation made under the powers granted by the European Communities Act 1972. I think that he ultimately does not wish to do that, because he spoke with eloquence earlier on the need to restrain regulatory activity by governments—not only this Government but all governments. We argue that it is more sensible to remove or reduce by order burdens resulting from any legislation and regardless of whether they originate from the European Community. As this amendment would impose an unnecessary restriction on the order-making power in Clause 1, I urge noble Lords, whether they be Front-Bench Conservative Peers or not, to reject it. It is worth reminding ourselves of the value of Section 2(2) of the European Communities Act. It makes provision for a Minister or a department to implement European Community obligations into domestic law by regulation. I know that noble Lords do not always agree with them, but there are many benefits in adopting rules set at European level. For example, the legislation underpinning the common customs union means that the UK can import from and export to all other EU members without having to face 24 different sets of rules and duties. That seems an entirely sensible approach. EU legislation which we transposed into UK legislation opened the national telecommunications market to competition in 1998. Breaking those national monopolies helped to bring down the cost of calls by 40 per cent to 50 per cent. Although I could quote many other examples of the valuable transposition of EU regulatory regimes into UK law, and there might be some benefit in doing so, those two examples alone are sufficiently important examples. The noble Baroness asked me to give a figure for the number of EU regulations scrapped in the past six months. I do not have that information to hand and suspect that she did not expect me to. Perhaps I should have had it. But I am happy to write to her and to share the fruits of the correspondence with other noble Lords who have contributed to our debate.