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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

I am sure that noble Lords will not be at all surprised to hear that I am not a fan of this amendment and that I am firmly set in my opposition to it. The idea of sunsetting Part 1 does not make a lot of sense to me. The government amendments tabled ahead of and accepted on Report in the Commons mean that the order-making power is clearly focused on better regulatory outcomes. Simply to set an arbitrary date for the expiry of Part 1 would, for the reasons I am about to adumbrate, be wholly inappropriate. It is my firm belief that there is no need for a sunset clause. The safeguards contained in the Bill, coupled with the rigorous parliamentary scrutiny that any proposal will undergo, and the ability for Parliament to veto orders, are sufficiently robust. There is no need to introduce the level of uncertainty that a sunset provision would bring. We can be confident that we are passing a robust Bill that will stand the test of time. The approach that we need to take is one of partnership of regulators and regulated working together. What message would we be sending the business community and the public and voluntary sectors if we arbitrarily stopped working with them on this? I think this would be the only conclusion that they could draw were we to insert a sunset clause. Are we to say that the Government are interested only in the short term? Of course we are not. This is a long-term approach to legislation and regulation, and any Government would be foolish not to look to the future. We have talked a lot about changing the culture, and a lot of that means that we have to get departments to invest resources in pursuing reforms that may in the end not prove possible. Will departments do that if there is a five-year cut-off point? An important element of the culture change we see as necessary is one of confidence in methods for delivery, and knowing we are achieving what is needed, and that work can continue without an arbitrary deadline preventing it. People should be able to rely on primary and secondary legislation—a point made on a number of occasions already during today’s debates. We want to avoid a situation where those who are regulated by an order do not have confidence in its provisions and think that it will simply be overturned and lapse. I hope that orders will be able to deliver wide-ranging reforms such as those that I have elucidated in connection with the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order. It is important that, for instance, the large numbers of businesses complying with the fire safety order have confidence in its provisions. We want Parliament to pass a power that it has confidence in now and, this being the case, should have confidence in for the future. The Government have already given the undertaking that a Minister of the Crown will report to the House within five years after enactment on the operation and effectiveness of the Bill. If the sunset clause was included in the Bill, then even if at the end of five years Parliament wanted this power to continue, it would simply expire; no further orders could be made and the 2001 Act certainly would not revive them. We would have two options in those circumstances, neither of which is edifying or compelling: either to introduce new primary legislation for a new order-making power, or to have sensible and beneficial proposals that would have been made by order having to wait to be made by primary legislation instead. Those appear to me very cumbersome ways in which to deal with things that we believe are best dealt with in this respect. I doubt whether noble Lords have given this careful consideration, particularly in terms of its impact on businesses. There is nothing in Amendment No. 112 to ensure that orders already made under Part 1 will remain in place—if, indeed, that is the intention. If they do not remain in force, everything done by them, including amendments to primary legislation, would in effect be repealed. I can only assume noble Lords intend existing orders to remain in force, otherwise all the efforts of departments and the beneficial reforms made over five years would be completely wasted. Unless there is an express provision to that effect, however, the position cannot be entirely free from doubt. That is why we have a saving provision in our Bill to make it completely clear, when we repeal the 2001 Act, that orders made under it will continue to have effect. Similar amendments to introduce a sunset clause were tabled when both the 1994 and 2001 Acts were going through Parliament, and during the passage of the 1994 Act the then Conservative Administration—wisely, in my view, although perhaps I would not have thought so at the time—resisted them. I think they were right to do so. What was good for a good old-fashioned Tory Administration in 1994 was good enough for us in 2001, and should be good enough in 2006. Noble Lords opposite should stick to their original intentions and withdraw this amendment.