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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

This is an amendment with which I am familiar, in the sense that noble Lords opposite frequently table a reporting amendment to Bills to ensure that the standard and threshold of holding the Government to account are raised. I have some sympathy with that intent; reporting should certainly be part of the process. Yet admirable though this amendment is, ultimately I cannot support it. However, I can certainly support its spirit and advise your Lordships that we have already given a very clear commitment to having a review process. My honourable friend Mr McFadden gave that commitment in another place during a debate on a similar amendment. We certainly support the idea that we should constantly look at how well the reforms are working. It was in part the review of the 2001 Act which persuaded us that we needed a rather more dramatic piece of legislation that would be more effective. So, if you like, a review of the legislative framework has already had an impact. It has meant that we have tried to design better procedures for the process of deregulating. We also believe that all departments should keep their legislation under review. That is why the Government set up the Panel on Regulatory Accountability—the PRA— chaired by the Prime Minister, and why there are regulatory reform Ministers in each of the main regulatory departments. That is also why there is a Better Regulation Commission, keeping an eye on them all. Departments are currently reviewing their regulations and drafting simplification plans, which include measures to reduce administrative burdens on business and the public and voluntary sectors. These will be published by the time of the PBR, later this year. The Better Regulation Commission will provide independent advice to government from business and other external stakeholders about new regulatory proposals and the Government's overall regulatory performance. It will continue the challenge role carried out by the Better Regulation Task Force. It is perhaps worth saying that since 1 January this year, the commission has taken on a new responsibility to review the simplification plans that government departments and some independent regulators are preparing. The commission sits on the PRA committee reviewing the plans; and its opinion of a department’s plan will be made public at the time of the plan’s publication. Departments will be required to revise these plans annually; as part of that, they will include details of simplifications delivered, including orders made the previous year. All departments are also obliged to report on their better regulation work as part of their annual reports, as they have done for the past two years. That picks up something referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, with regard to a wider review to look at areas where the deregulatory genie has not yet reached. Members of your Lordships' House will be aware that while debating a similar amendment in another place, we gave very clear commitments. In addition to departmental reports, we would expect departmental Select Committees to report on the annual reports I referred to, as appropriate. The Commons Regulatory Reform Committee, with its new expanded remit, will also take interest in these reports and departmental simplifications plans. Although I agree that we should be open to reviewing orders, it would be unnecessarily prescriptive to write that into the Bill. I am sure that Members of your Lordships' House share my view and that of Members in another place that there must be a cultural shift within Whitehall as a whole to deliver the real benefits on the ground to those who are being regulated. While we debate the Bill here, it may seem as though we are debating something in isolation, but Members of your Lordships' House may not see in the same way the work being carried out throughout the departments. There is a much greater desire to move the deregulatory agenda on and the Bill is a reflection of that not an absolute in itself. The amendment would impose an annual reporting cycle on the Government, which would be an unnecessary burden and may well deflect attention from the important work done by the task force, the commission and the various committees that look at regulations. It would be contrary to the spirit and the purpose of the Bill. Although I understand and sympathise with the desire to have annual reports, in the end it would be counter productive. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, referred to comments that I made in earlier debates, possibly when I was summarising the portal that we have set up to encourage greater public participation in the deregulatory drive throughout government. That portal provides us with a sensible approach because it enables a much more interactive and interrogative means for business, the voluntary and public sectors, and people who require and are part of the general deregulatory flow to bring forward their propositions for deregulation. The Better Regulation Executive is currently discussing with departments the best way to use that portal so that we can have a regular summary of the progress that has been made towards particular items of deregulation that people have brought forward. That would provide us with a useful public window for what we are trying to achieve in a way that people can understand. Such practical measures would achieve much more than a burdensome annual report, which runs against the spirit of the Bill in terms of deregulation and ignores the important point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, that we should encourage departments which are less enthusiastic about deregulation than other departments who are keen to move that agenda forward.