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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

I have added my name to the amendment standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, because it fills an extraordinary gap in the Bill. I understand and approve of the value of the Bill to deregulate and to reduce red tape. As the Minister said at Second Reading, the Bill will, "““effect real change in the UK’s regulatory environment””." He went on to say: "““it is of crucial importance for the continued competitiveness of this country that any Government pursue as many measures as possible to ensure that regulation is kept to an absolute minimum so that businesses … can concentrate their efforts where they add most value””.—[Official Report, 13/06/06; col. 121.]" We can all agree with that. The Minister went on to trumpet the fact that the UK was rated the second most competitive economy in the EU, which is rather like boasting that you are the second most successful penalty taker in the English football team—it really is not terribly relevant. We are competing not just in the EU but globally, and our global competitiveness is being eroded by the torrent of EU legislation that is brought forward without, as my noble friend Lord Waddington said, our apparently being able to change a single syllable of it, even where we disagree with it. It is important that the amendment is considered seriously in the light of the fact that between 50 per cent and 75 per cent—estimates vary—of our business legislation is imported from the EU. I believe that the Government said that the figure was 50 per cent in an Answer to my noble friendLord Pearson, while the German Government have said that 80 per cent of their laws and burdens on business come from the EU. The think tank Open Europe has produced a study which found that EU legislation has been responsible for 77 per cent of the costs of regulations on UK businesses since 1998, at a cost of £30 billion to the UK economy. But none of those regulations, as my noble friend Lord Waddington pointed out, can apparently be touched by Parliament. Neither the other place nor this place can change a single syllable of any EU regulation. It simply has to be rubber-stamped and I do not believe that that is at all helpful when it comes to lessening the burden of deregulation, as this Bill is purported to do. Perhaps I could give a few examples from the coalface of the cost and burden of these regulations. I am a farmer and just a few of the regulations that I have to face are as follows. I begin with the 18 cross-compliance directives which govern our payments through the rural Payments Agency from the European Union. We have the fallen stock directive, which is an expensive scheme to stop us disposing of fallen stock on our own farms. ““Fallen stock”” does not refer to the FTSE index but to animals that die on farms. We have the horse passports directive, which is totally unnecessary and completely unacceptable. It is just to prevent food from those who eat horse flesh on the Continent being affected by exports from this country. We have the waste disposal directive, which is adding costs by the day to agriculture; the work at height directive, also known as the ““how many men does it take to change a light bulb?”” directive; the temperature at work directive; the veterinary medicines directive; and the waste of water framework directive, which I am struggling with at the moment. For some obscure reason it requires all farmers and rural businesses to put non-return valves on every single tap on their farm and to make sure that they cannot be used to hose anything down. The reason for this, apparently, is that there may be some danger, however remote, of contaminating the mains water supply. I wrote to our enforcing agency through the Severn-Trent river authority, asking it whether there had ever been such a calamity, but as yet I have not had an answer. Meanwhile, I have had several letters from the inspectorate and I have gone round the farm installing these various bits and pieces. So far it has cost £2,800, but counting. If this Bill is to be effective, it has to deal with EU legislation, as well as home-cooked legislation. Therefore, I hope that the Committee will listen very carefully and take on board the import of this amendment.