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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

I am sure that it would. The Minister did say that other Departments were drawing up lists of amendments and deregulatory measures that they intended to introduce, and I look forward to hearing about those in more detail in the forthcoming Session. The Bill was designed to solve what the Government saw as a problem with the Regulatory Reform Act 2001, namely, that it was not deregulating enough. Only 27 regulations were scrapped under the 2001 Act. That is a poor performance by any measure, but I am sorry to say that I think that it a sign more of the Government’s failure than of the failure of the Act. The Government were good on rhetoric and poor on delivery. Now, it appears that the Minister is belatedly becoming slightly better at delivery and is hoping that his ministerial colleagues in other Departments will become better at it as well. In their impatience, the Government decided that the best way to get rid of red tape was to abolish parliamentary scrutiny. I do not think that that was right, and I warmly welcome the amendments made to the Bill in another place.