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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

First, I wish to speak to Amendments Nos. 112B, 113 and 113A, which were not spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. I question why we are leaving yet again to codes of practice matters that could reasonably be stated in the Bill. The Government generally try to leave too much to guidance and codes of practice, and sometimes it is hard to see why. If they are concerned that putting guidance into statute will lead to more cases of decisions of Ministers or public bodies being judicially reviewed, I suggest that that concern is misguided. The courts look at adherence to guidance anyway when assessing whether the decision of a Minister or action of a public body was irrational or procedurally incorrect. Although guidance is not binding in the same way as a statutory duty, the courts will none the less consider that there is a legitimate expectation that such guidance will be followed. With that in mind I question why much of the content of the code is not placed in the Bill. The Cabinet Office has kindly supplied the draft code in advance of this debate, so I welcome the fact that at least we can debate Clauses 23 and 24 with it available. Section 2 of the draft code begins with the statement: "““This section is based on the principle that no inspection should take place without a reason””." Why cannot that be placed in the Bill as a legal requirement? I read on: "““Regulators must use risk assessment to programme all inspection activity””." Where is the drafting problem there in getting those exact words into Clause 23? Section 3 deals with data requirements. This is the bane of every business’s existence—endless form-filling and sending in of returns. The code contains a very pithy statement; that, "““if two regulators require the same information, they must, in so far as possible, share data so that it is only collected once””." Why cannot that be expressed as a legal requirement? It would allow businesses to tell a regulator to go back to another regulator and get the information from it, rather than making the business do all the work again just because the regulators were being inefficient. I have delved into the code enough; it contains useful advice which ought to be in the Bill. I shall now discuss in detail Amendments Nos. 112B and 113. These amendments seek to question the extent to which these principles will apply to regulators. The Explanatory Notes state at paragraph 82: "““The duty to have regard to these principles is subject to any other legal requirement, such as a statutory duty or a requirement of EC law, which will take priority over the principles””." This worries me slightly because at first sight Part 2 sounds very positive: here we have set out in statute some sensible principles with which no one could really disagree. If the regulators do not have to operate according to these principles—if their statutory duties are incompatible with that—how much regulatory activity would therefore be exempt from the operation of these principles? I understand that this subsection would exempt the economic regulators, particularly those explicitly referred to under Clause 26(5). Whether those exemptions in Clause 26 are appropriate is another matter; I seek to find out the extent to which these principles will have any real effect. Amendment No. 113 attempts to give more teeth to Part 2. By ensuring that a report on the operation of that part is laid before Parliament, we will be able to keep a check on what regulators are up to and how they have been behaving. I expect that the work entailed in compiling such a report would already be taking place. The Better Regulation Executive in conjunction with the Better Regulation Commission would surely be up to date with what was going on with the regulators, so there should be no reason not to expect a formal report to Parliament on an annual basis.