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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

I am drawn very much to the analysis to which the amendment has been subjected by my noble friend Lord Borrie and the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe. Of the three parts of the amendment, subsection (1) gives me most concern. We have been discussing burdens and the quantity of regulation that can impact on a business, a voluntary organisation and the public or private sectors and so on. When I read this part of the amendment, my heart sank because I had thought that noble Lords opposite were beginning to get to grips with what the Government are trying to achieve. Subsection (1) asks us to consider producing a list of all regulations—I am not sure whether it is secondary or primary legislation or both, or whether it is all legislation in the past or all future legislation—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 fill in forms, prepare and publish prescribed codes or policies or otherwise to comply with each regulation. That is a massive undertaking. What sort of bureaucracy would a Government need to deploy to fulfil the requirements of the amendment? I cannot begin to quantify it and I doubt whether the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, can begin to do so either. Is that the sort of thing that we want to ask of civil servants who are tasked with the business of improving the quality of regulation—or deregulating, depending on which term you prefer? I say not. I cannot see the value in that exercise. I cannot see what it would do to hone and perfect the improvement of regulation or to reduce the burden of regulation within our legislative and statutory framework. I cannot see it working. The noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, then goes on in the amendment to talk about target setting and about having robust methodology. We argue that we already have in place a robust examination of regulations. That is why we have a regulatory impact assessment and why departments are asked annually to go through their stock of regulations. I do not think that we need the prescriptive and bureaucratic approach which the noble Lord, Lord Howard, wishes on us in order to achieve that objective. Regulations exist for good reason. They ensure that we protect citizens and provide a sensible framework within which our businesses, public services and voluntary organisations can operate. We want our public servants to use their finite resource to root out the unnecessary bureaucracy and to deal with it rather than investing more of their time in producing lists and writing more reports for Parliament, whether on an annual or a biennial basis, whichever approach is adopted. I understand that the Opposition might have thought that this amendment would achieve an improvement to regulation, but I cannot see how they can demonstrate that it will. We are the first Government in the UK to face up to the challenge of identifying and measuring costs on business, charities and voluntary organisations. Each year, as I think I have said before, departments will publish detailed information on the administrative costs of complying with government regulation and their analysis and plans for reducing both those costs and other regulatory burdens. The Government will put in place a stretching but, I think I can argue in the end, an achievable target for reducing each department’s administrative costs over time. At present, departments are reviewing their regulations and preparing simplification plans, taking into account suggestions for change that have been made by those who have made representations to us from the business, voluntary and charity sectors. Those plans will be published annually because they focus on burdens that are experienced and real to organisations rather than burdens that are imagined as the fruit of the whole stock of legislation and governance. These measures will include a commitment to reduce regulatory burdens on business and the voluntary sector as well as the public sector. The plans will be published at about the same time as the Pre-Budget Report. Departments are also obliged to report on their better regulation work as part of their annual reports. I made that point during an earlier debate. We do not need prescriptive and inflexible targets on the statute book for a reduction in bureaucracy. Progress to date and our commitment to this agenda should be visible to all. For example, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is already undertaking a measurement exercise. It has already announced a commitment to reduce by at least 10 per cent the administrative burden on business of dealing with HMRC forms and returns, over a five-year period. It also aims to reduce the administrative cost on business of dealing with audits and inspections by10 per cent over three years and by at least 15 per cent over five years. This amendment is not necessary; it is over-prescriptive; we are already on the right track; we are already working in the direction of reducing the burdens about which the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, is concerned. It would provide us with a straitjacket from which we could not escape and which would, as far as I can make out, provide us with a work stream that could last more than several lifetimes. The noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, asked: what proportion of deregulatory work needed amendment to primary legislation? I should respond to that, although it is an almost impossible question to answer. We intend to try to use all the tools we can to deregulate; that is what this legislation is about. We can also use guidance. We may want to use primary legislation for different measures; and we may want to use the secondary legislation for different measures, including orders under the Bill. The Bill enables us to have a more streamlined procedure, a more exact procedure and one that does not become too bogged down in the process, but which gets to the heart of what is required to take action that is effective against things that perhaps have been on the statute book for some time, that are no longer necessary, and that are imposing burdens on business and other organisations. That practical, hard-nosed way of dealing with things is what we require. This legislation will enable us better to perfect that. The noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, will not have heard a direct answer to his question because I do not think there is one. However, we are attempting to achieve, and we are beginning to achieve, a practical and hard-nosed approach to tackling real problems with regulatory burdens that exist for people out there in the real world, rather than theoretical burdens that the noble Lord seems to think can be solved by a massive expansion in bureaucracy and a rather heavy-handed approach to quantification.