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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

Those of us who read the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee will remember that the problem is not that Ministers have not been eager to have regulatory reform but that the consultation procedures that the 2001 Act requires slow things down. The problem is not hurrying Ministers on but is getting clarity in the legislation so that the little things that the Minister wants to carry out do not take 1,900 days, as the abolition of the beet-sugar research corporation did. I sat in the committee and considered this reform and the problem is never the Minister’s eagerness but that we have created a structure that is extremely hard to dismantle.