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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

I shall say no more than that I will give the point fair consideration. I am sure that it is constructively made. I said earlier that I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, was being generous in his comments because he conceded that his Amendment No. 24, if it had not necessarily been superseded by government Amendment No. 65, seemed to address the same range of issues. He said that he would go away and reflect on it further. I am grateful for that because it probably means that I do not have to go through a rather long, and what the noble Lord might consider slightly turgid, explanation of why we reject Amendment No. 24. I hope that, having heard what I said earlier about Amendment No. 65, he will reflect on it further. I am sure that I will happily deal with further concerns that were at the root of his amendment outside the parameters of the Committee. I am grateful for the noble Lord saying that he was minded in any event to withdraw his amendment. I turn to Amendment No. 25, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. I certainly understand its rationale. It seems to stem from a set of priorities that is similar to those of the Government. The amendment provides that the power of legislating can be conferred only on bodies which are themselves set up in statute. I am grateful to noble Lords for their contribution to debates on this issue. I certainly understand the noble Lord’s objective in proposing this amendment, which is to ensure that powers to legislate can be conferred only appropriately. As described, the Government have considerable sympathy with this objective, and we have introduced our own amendment to the Bill to ensure that legislative powers can be conferred only on appropriate persons and bodies. However, I have concerns that the amendment put forward by the noble Lord would not in practice further this important objective. Most immediately, it rules out the possibility of conferring powers to legislate on Ministers—the category of persons who, as the above examples suggest, are most likely to require such powers as part of a proposal for regulatory reform. It would rule out other bodies or organisations which, while they have important functions conferred under an enactment, were not set up by statute. I conclude that the noble Lord’s amendment is in essence probably too restrictive. The second part of the amendment provides that legislative powers could be conferred on bodies only to legislate in areas for which they already have responsibility. While I understand the rationale for the proposal—in most cases, of course, a power to legislate would be given to a body only to make legislation in its area of responsibility—my concern is that it may create an overly restrictive arrangement in practice. In the case of orders implementing mergers, as recommended in the Hampton review, or reforming entire regulatory regimes, as with the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, sensible modifications to a body’s legislative powers may be integral to the proposal in question. In this case, such a restriction would prevent the delivery of a worthwhile reform. It is worth reminding ourselves that it is Parliament, not Ministers, that remains the final arbiter of what is an appropriate use of the powers in the Bill. The critical point of which I should remind your Lordships is that Parliament and its committees would never approve a measure giving bodies or persons powers to legislate on matters completely unrelated to their duties or inappropriate for other reasons. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Norton, will further reflect on that. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, raised something of a red herring about abolishing bodies to the extent that we would be able to bring into play mergers which were highly controversial and ought to be constructed through primary legislation. The Government have given a very clear undertaking that they will not deliver highly controversial proposals by the regulatory reform order route. The precondition in Clause 4 prevents orders that do not maintain necessary protections and rights. So the noble Lord should be satisfied that that is effectively a protection that rules out controversial mergers by order. There may be mergers that are not in the least bit controversial—which are dead boring and nobody is at all interested in but which are sensible and make a lot of administrative and organisational sense and would reduce burdens on business, which is what we are all trying to archive. Ultimately, of course, there is a statutory right of veto enshrined in the legislation.