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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

I, too, have an amendment in this group and perhaps I might say a few words about it. As a preliminary, I offer to the Committee the apologies of my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour, who had hoped to put her name to these amendments and to be in her place today. However, very wisely, given the temperature outside, she thought that it was better to stay at home and not try to travel; and so I offer her apologies. A number of the amendments to which my noble friend had wanted to add her name to mine were suggested to us by the Law Society of Scotland. They are points of substance. The first, Amendment No. 14, is very interesting because it proposes to take out the words, "““for doing or not doing anything in the course of any activity””," which could be as wide as anybody chose to make it, and insert instead, "““for failure to observe a restriction or to comply with a requirement or condition””." The interesting thing about the amendment is that what we are seeking to put back are the words from the Regulatory Reform Act 2001. The view has been put to me that those words from the 2001 Act made a much more focused provision, which is very clear and precise. That formulation would allow the removal of sanctions for failure to comply with a restriction, requirement or condition. It is argued that that would be a much more proportionate response to the need to remove burdens than is in the extremely wide words in the Bill. This is an example of the Government being so determined to produce a new Bill that they have produced a worse definition than was in the original Act. The words in the original Act seemed clearer and more specific, and therefore more limiting of the extent to which the Government could rely on subsection (d) for making an order. I simply cannot understand why the Government have abandoned the earlier wording for what I and, I know, a number of others regard as much inferior wording in the Bill. I therefore hope that the Government might be prepared to make a concession and agree that they got it right five years ago. Why do they need to change it now?