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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

We understand the thrust of where the noble Lord is coming from with this amendment. I hope, as my first task in this Bill, I can persuade him that his approach is flawed and that what is already in process effectively meets what he seeks to achieve. He is effectively saying that regulations which the Government are unable to measure in terms of time and cost should either be removed or reduced. That position seems to have no regard to possible evidence of the benefits of introducing the regulation. If we accepted that, the noble Lord could find that important protections for consumers and other groups could be removed. That is why the Government require regulatory impact assessment for new regulations, including consideration of non-regulatory options. All regulatory proposals must be accompanied by a regulatory impact assessment, and major proposals are scrutinised and require approval by the Panel for Regulatory Accountability. The purpose of RIAs and PRA scrutiny is to ensure that the costs and consequences of regulatory proposals are reasonable and proportionate to the benefits. Exemptions for any group or sector, including small businesses, are considered on a case-by-case basis, with Ministers making their decision transparent through the RIA/PRA process. One of the key principles of better regulation is light-touch implementation of policy proposals. The amendment runs counter to that principle, adding an unnecessary and bureaucratic step to the policy-making process. RIAs already consider the impact of any regulation on small and medium-sized enterprises and are subject to scrutiny by officials within the Better Regulation Executive. The BRE is currently developing proposals to improve the effectiveness of RIAs. The aims will be both to improve the clarity with which costs and benefits are presented and to streamline the RIA requirements, making them easier to use throughout the policy development and implementation cycle—the point that the noble Lord was particularly pressing. The BRE intends to consult on its proposals shortly. On the cost of business, charities and voluntary organisation complying with existing regulations, no UK Government have understood what the estimates of the administrative costs are until now, as my noble friend has just outlined. As part of one of the most ambitious regulatory reform agendas in the world, the Government have faced up to the challenge of identifying and measuring the total administrative costs placed on businesses, charities and voluntary organisations by existing government regulation. Noble Lords have just heard that each department will publish detailed information later this year on both the administrative costs of complying with government regulation, and their plans for reducing these costs and other regulatory burdens. The Government will set stretching but achievable targets for reducing each department’s administrative costs over time. To put such an amendment in the Bill would be too prescriptive, giving no regard to important protection the regulation may exist to provide. It would not take account of what the Government are already delivering on measurement of administrative costs on the regulated, an approach wholeheartedly supported by the business community: "““We are encouraged that the effort to plan and then implement reductions in administrative burdens is already underway, through a nationwide survey to establish how much time and money businesses must expend to demonstrate compliance, and to identify which regulations impose the greatest burdens””." Those are not my words, but those of key representatives of business in a letter to the Government earlier this year. While it seems a sensible amendment on a prima facie basis, it would cause uncertainty within the regulatory environment. This Government have for the first time completed an exercise to identify and measure the administrative costs of government regulations on business, charities and voluntary organisations. We will set meaningful targets for reducing those costs, and recognise that everything on the statute book, whether originating from this or other administrative legislative output, has been measured in terms of time and cost. Each government department has identified its existing stock of regulations through the administrative burdens reductions exercise, evidence that will indicate where the costs are, so that they can then take action to reduce them. In summary, I welcome the noble Lord’s intent with this amendment, but do not agree that it is an effective way of achieving the right outcome. I invite him to withdraw it.