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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

With the leave of the House, Madam Deputy Speaker. Many facts and figures are cited in this area, some of which shed light on the debate and some of which do not. It is alleged that there are 4,000 new regulations a year. The number of Acts of Parliament passed each parliamentary Session is broadly of the same order of magnitude under this Administration as it was under the last, as is the number of SIs introduced each year. The latter number has remained between 3,200 and 3,500 for the last decade and more. Let us not pretend either that every SI is a burden on business. More than 95 per cent. of SIs have no impact on business. Many of those have only a local or temporary effect, such as road traffic orders. It does not shed light on our debates to pretend that 4,000 new regulations on business are passed each year. As for those regulations that may be removed, reference has been made to the regulatory reform orders passed under the Regulatory Reform Act 2001. Some 30 RROs have been passed, but we should not make the mistake that that means that only 30 items have been deregulated. For example, the fire RRO replaced about 50 pieces of legislation with one new, risk-based regime. That shows that one RRO can have a wide impact. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) asked about Lords amendment No. 29, which moves the definition of the phrase ““function of legislating””. However, that does not imply that the restrictions in clause 5 on conferring that function always apply. I hope that that clarifies matters for my hon. Friend. Lords amendment agreed to. Lords amendments Nos. 3 to 6 agreed to.