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European Council

The Commission has its own means now of assessing and, I think, publishing—I shall check that in case I am wrong—the administrative costs of legislation. The idea is to reduce the percentage of those costs by 25 per cent. That is its purpose and it is similar to what we have proposed in the UK. The whole point is that administrative costs should be measurable. I agree that it is a big change in what the European Union has done up to now, but I would think and hope that the hon. Gentleman welcomed that.