---

Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

My noble friend has approached the problem from a different angle from that which we have done thus far. Generally, the burden of the cases made has been whether this is appropriate to an order-making power or should be left to full-scale legislation. But I have also been considering that, so far as I can see, the Bill lacks any procedure to oblige Ministers to deregulate. I wonder whether we ought seriously to consider that. My noble friend’s amendment is limited to where the burden arises because the legislation is hard to understand, but there surely ought to be some procedure whereby a citizen or firm that is aggrieved by the failure of a Government to deregulate can do something about it. We have lots of procedures to stop a Government using the powers in the Bill for improper purposes, and we must welcome them, but where in the Bill is there a procedure that a citizen could use to draw attention to a case that could benefit from deregulation in any of the forms that the Minister has described and to ask the Government to deregulate? At the moment, all a citizen can do is write to his Member of Parliament, who may be persuaded to raise the matter by Question. There is no legal procedure whereby a citizen can oblige the Minister to deregulate and, if there is a dispute, to have it determined in some appropriate way. The Committee ought to return to this; in the mean time, my noble friend has offered a valuable road ahead.