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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

That, of course, being the case, it could be down to interpretation. Anyway, to get to the point, Amendment No. 11 seeks to add the words ““identifiable risk”” into the definition of ““burdens”” in Clause 1. The noble Lord, Lord Borrie, has put his finger on why we do not need the amendment. The amendment is unnecessary. Health and safety regulations which are disproportionate to identifiable risk could be removed under the existing definition of ““burdens”” in Clause 1(3). The amendment alludes to a situation, for instance, where a business is inspected very frequently but that business has a good track record on health and safety and the evidence suggests that the level of inspections is disproportionate to the risk that the business poses. But this over-inspection, of course, imposes a financial cost and an administrative inconvenience on the business. It also imposes a cost on the regulators because they have to submit themselves to extra time and energy costs in enforcing the regulations unnecessarily. We contend that such situations are already covered by the definition of ““burdens”” in Clause 1(3). Amendment No. 11 is unnecessary because it will not add to the definitions of ““burdens”” which are already in the clause. I am heartened by some of the debate because it is clear that both sides of the Committee have in their sights the same sorts of problems and issues. If we continue in that vein, I think the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, and I will end up agreeing with each other rather more than we have ever agreed with each other in the past. Noble Lords will probably think that is a good thing.