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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

The power to remove or reduce burdens resulting from legislation is provided in Clause 1. As well as removing or reducing burdens, new burdens could also be added. It is important that orders should be able to impose new burdens. When an order removes a burden, this will often need to be replaced with a smaller, better perfected and more proportionate and refined burden. For instance, perhaps a business is currently inspected five times a year for its compliance with a particular regulation, which takes up to five man-hours. This amendment would prevent an order removing this requirement and replacing it with a requirement for the business to carry out self-assessment once a year, which takes up one man-hour, as this would be a burden to which the business was previously not subject. The ability to add new and, in this case, more proportionate burdens was a key improvement of the 2001 Act over its predecessor, the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994. More than two-thirds of orders that have been made under the 2001 Act imposed new but more refined and appropriate—and, I would argue, ultimately more proportionate—burdens. Clause 15 provides that for orders under Clause 1, the Minister must lay an explanatory document before Parliament, including an assessment of the extent to which the orders would remove or reduce any burden or burdens. Amendment No. 85A adds to that requirement so that the explanatory document must also detail any burden or burdens imposed by the order. I do not oppose the principle that the order-making process should be transparent. I could fairly argue that that is what we are trying to establish. In practice, where orders add any new burdens as defined in Clause 1, the Government would expect any reduction or increase in burdens to be detailed in the proposal’s impact assessment, which will be made publicly available. The parliamentary committees would likely consider the burdens imposed or increased as part of their scrutiny of individual orders. I understand and appreciate the principle behind Amendment No. 85A. I simply argue that it is disproportionate in its effect and is already covered by the process that we have put in place that will, of course, strengthen our impact assessments. I believe that the noble Lord and I are in the same area as regards our intent, but we have got there first.