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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

moved Amendment No. 31: After Clause 1, insert the following new clause- ““DUTY TO REDUCE REGULATION (1) A Secretary of State must publish annually a list of all regulations for which his department is responsible which lay a burden on any activity, service, body, voluntary group or business, and at the same time publish an estimate of the total compliance cost of each such regulation and of the average time taken by each person affected by the burden to comply with each regulation. (2) The Secretary of State shall have a duty to reduce by10 per cent the number of regulations established under legislation for which his department is responsible within two years of the coming into force of this Act. (3) At the end of the period of two years after the coming into force of this Act, the Secretary of State shall lay a report before each House of Parliament detailing his proposals to reduce by a further 10 per cent the number of regulations established under legislation for which his department is responsible and the timetable by which he expects to achieve that target.”” The noble Lord said: I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if, by way of preface to this amendment, I refer to the remarks made by the Minister when this Bill was discussed in Committee a week ago. I return to this matter only as it is of such fundamental importance and because it bears on this amendment. The Minister said: "““The power to amend or revoke secondary legislation is less important, as departments will always have a power to do this in any event””.—[Official Report, 3/7/06; col. 119.]" That has made me think, as it has the noble Earl, Lord Onslow. Unfortunately, hard as I ponder, I am now even less able to understand this Bill. As departments already have the power to amend or revoke secondary legislation, why, if the Government are so keen on deregulation, are Ministers not falling over themselves to revoke great swathes of expensive and useless legislation? The main argument against the Bill is the reluctance to give Ministers the power to bypass Parliament. But, how much deregulation is dependent on amending or repealing primary legislation? I should be grateful if the Minister could give some examples of the primary legislation that would be removed under these powers. There must surely be a long list of Acts or the Government would not have given so much time to this Bill. Can the Minister say what proportion of envisaged deregulation will be achieved through the repeal of primary legislation and what proportion of deregulation will be achieved through the repeal of secondary legislation, for which, as the Minister has told us, the Government already have powers? If one of the purposes of the Bill is to enable primary legislation to be amended or removed without going through the normal legislative process, then, clearly, there must be adequate protections to avoid the abuse of power. I am still unable to see how adequate safeguards can be introduced without losing that flexibility to repeal and amend legislation, which this Bill seeks to provide. I apologise to your Lordships for returning to that point, but it bears repetition. The Minister has confirmed that power already exists to deregulate secondary legislation. Since that power is not being used, it is important that pressure is applied to Ministers to make effective use of both existing powers and the powers to deregulate that the Bill proposes to give them. There will always be other projects and initiatives that will be more attractive than the tedious job of getting rid of regulations. I refer your Lordships to the comment in the 20th report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which stated that, "““it is our opinion that the block to regulatory reform is departmental priorities rather than the ““burden”” test in the 2001 Act””." Given the record of Ministers on deregulation, the Bill will be pointless if there is not a statutory duty on the Minister to deregulate. Although it is not included in the amendment, it is important for there to be a time limit within which action must be taken. We can return to that when the Minister’s reaction to the amendment is known. The idea of creating a target for deregulation was strongly endorsed by the Better Regulation Task Force, which stated that target setting was, "““a robust method for the government to improve its control over the flow of new regulation and a driver to reduce the burdens imposed by the stock of existing regulation””." My view is that the amendment’s suggestion of a reduction of 10 per cent over two years is an extremely modest ambition, and if the Minister were to say that such a reduction was inadequate, I would accept that as a valid criticism. I wished to suggest a minimum target that was easily obtainable. I refer again to the Better Regulation Task Force. It recommended the Dutch model of deregulation, which involved introducing a target for reducing administrative costs. The Netherlands chose a target of 25 per cent over four years, with some limited flexibility across different government targets. If the Dutch approach were used, as well as the benefit of increasing productivity and growth of business and a mechanism for increasing the efficiency of government, the task force estimated that an investment of £35 million would potentially increase gross domestic product by £16 billion. The report recommended that the Government set a target by May 2006 for reducing the administrative burden. The Government’s response was that targets would be set by the time of the Pre-Budget Report 2006. Can the Minister confirm that such targets will be forthcoming and that progress on the implementation of the recommendation is on course? I understand that the Government accepted in full all the recommendations of the Less is More report so I am sure that the Minister will welcome the amendment. I beg to move.