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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, for introducing the amendment, and the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, for his contribution. Although we are unable to accept it, I have an opportunity to explain what the Government are doing in this area. Amendment No. 34 concerns the procedures in place for ensuring progress in delivering the better regulation agenda. I support the notion that we should be looking constantly to see how well reforms are working. Indeed, no one could argue that this Government do not take seriously their commitment to regulatory reform. Government departments already report on their better regulation work as part of their annual reports, and they have done so for the past two years. Departments are being asked to provide rolling programmes of simplification and set targets for reductions in administrative burdens. Simplification plans will be published shortly. Plans will clearly be expected to list all better regulation proposals developed by departments and summarise how measures to reduce regulatory burdens will be taken forward. Where these proposals require amendments to primary legislation, they may well benefit from the powers in this Bill, and to ensure effective delivery without the need to wait for a Bill. The better regulation portal referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Howard, is also available to provide an opportunity for businesses, public and voluntary sector organisations, and individuals to make suggestions for where regulation could be simplified. Work is being done to make this process more transparent and to make public all proposals received, along with the departmental responses to those proposals. Our commitment to deliver on the better regulation agenda is evident in our achievements to date and in our ambitious programme to build on these successes. We have listened to businesses, public and voluntary sector organisations in order to take forward one of the most radical regulatory reform agendas in the world. My concern with the specific amendment proposed here is that in practice it would both replicate existing efforts and impose an unnecessary and bureaucratic set of statutory requirements on departments. What we do not need is a prescriptive and inflexible target on the statute book, especially one which requires that departments focus on continual reporting and detracts from real efforts to cut red tape. Moreover, Part 1 of the Bill obliges Ministers to submit an explanatory document to Parliament when laying a draft order including an assessment, so far as appropriate, of the extent to which the order would remove or reduce any burdens. The amendment would further duplicate the requirements on departments to conduct comprehensive impact assessments on all new proposals for regulatory reform. The independent Better Regulation Commission will scrutinise and comment on simplification plans. We also expect the Regulatory Reform Committee in the other place to play a key role in monitoring departments’ progress. We have been working closely with the committee to develop a new and expanded remit to enable it to report on wider regulatory reform issues. Its wider role will complement the work of relevant committees of this House in ensuring that there are consistent and focused efforts to deliver on the Government’s commitment to ease burdens across sectors in the UK. We welcome engagement and suggestions from committees of both Houses on the agenda. For these reasons, I consider the amendment unnecessary and I urge the noble Lord to withdraw it.