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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

Or, indeed, ““The West Wing””. As an outsider, I feel that I should first welcome the amendments introduced by the Minister—and, indeed, other amendments which he proposes to introduce later. The Bill is designed to make tackling regulation easier and to help establish a more risk-based approach to it. I hope that the amendments will contribute to that, but the Bill has not been dealt with as clearly as it should have been. There has been a great deal of debate in the House, but it would appear that the Government started with what was, as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) observed, a thoroughly bad Bill. It has been described, not least by my hon. Friends the Members for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) and for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly), as a Bill to abolish Parliament. It has undergone considerable metamorphoses, particularly in the other place, but the Government’s habit of introducing late amendments in this place has not made scrutiny of it any more effective.