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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, for moving his amendment, and for commending the Government for their efforts. I hesitate to nit-pick, but I think that the review by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson, was initiated in the Pre-Budget Report in 2005. It is eight and a half rather than nine and a half years. The review is part of a wider range of things in train, which demonstrates that the Government are serious about this and about avoiding gold-plating. It is probably a little unfair to suggest that legislation derived from the EU is not subject to scrutiny. The Section 2(2) approach is usually used to make regulations that are subject to either the negative or the affirmative resolution procedure. Of course, EC legislation is carefully scrutinised by the European Parliament as well, so it is not as though there is no scrutiny at all.