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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

I shall speak extraordinarily briefly to the amendments. In doing so, I refer back to the first amendment, because if, in using the word ““considers””, we relax the measure a little, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, says, the clause would then read something like, ““if the Minister considers the burden to be an administrative inconvenience””. That starts to become a remarkably lax control. As the Minister knows, because I have said it before—and I will say again and again, as it has to go on being said—we should not trust Ministers with more power than we have to. They might act on something that they consider to be an administrative burden and consequently repeal primary legislation. The Minister may frown and say, ““That is not what we intend to do””. Whenever I came back from school and my report was appalling, I used to say to my mother, ““I meant not to do that””. She used to say to me, ““The road to hell is paved with good intentions””. We all know that it is paved with good intentions. If the Bill gives someone the power to do something, as night follows day that power will be used. We have only to look at the powers being used under other legislation—for example, the arrest of a poor, wretched man at the Labour Party conference, or the police using the evidence of newspaper articles on charges under the SOCP Act. If we had thought that these things were possible, we would have made a much bigger row in Parliament. I do not trust Ministers. This is too broad. It is another aspect of legislation of such breadth being allowed to go through without jot or tittle. I hope that the Minister can come up with an answer that will assuage my doubts, but I doubt it.