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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

My Lords, before the Bill finally passes, I should like to raise one point for the record. Noble Lords who have taken an interest in this Bill will remember that when it arrived in your Lordships’ House it contained a clause relating to Law Commission Bills. Many of us disagreed with that and the clause was removed. Following that, the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, put in some extremely hard work and she and her team, who are to be congratulated on what they have so far managed to do, came up with proposals for dealing with Law Commission Bills in a different way. They would not require primary legislation, although I believe that some alteration to standing orders of both Houses would be required. I strongly approved of that and had hoped that it would be possible to have a final form of the proposed new procedure announced during the passage of this Bill either on Report or today. As I understand it, although the principle has been accepted all around, some details of the procedure have not yet been finalised with the result that it is not yet possible to make this announcement. However, I hope that very shortly it will be possible to announce new arrangements for Law Commission Bills. I think that we all accept that current procedures have made it impossible for a significant number of useful Bills to obtain parliamentary approval. I hope that the Minister will confirm that. It is certainly my understanding, and I was told by the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, yesterday, that that is the position. Finally, this Bill went to the House of Commons in a completely unacceptable form, which was not initially realised. A lot of credit for pointing out the very serious defects in the Bill rests on two of my honourable friends in the other place—Mr David Heath and Mr David Howarth—who campaigned strongly on this issue. As a result, the Government have recognised that there were very serious difficulties and have come up with a Bill which we now recognise, as does the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, as being satisfactory and acceptable. I believe that there are now no amendments to the Bill which are not acceptable to the Government, so it will not return to us from the other place.