---

Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

Following my noble friend Lord Cope of Berkeley, I want to refer to the statutory instruments bit of the 3,000. The number of statutory instruments—they will be in the next annual report of the Merits Committee—that have a real impact on the public and the institutions about which we have been talking is about 1,200 a year. It is a lot, but it is not quite as many as was indicated. There are many statutory instruments about temporary speed limits when motorway repairs are being carried out and many very technical ones which do not have any substantial effect on the public. Of those that do there are 1,200. The other missing bit is that some aspects of European legislation find their way into British law without necessarily going through the transposition of a British statutory instrument. I do not know those figures because they do not come to the Merits Committee. The European regulations that come to the Merits Committee, and which are included in that 1,200, are the ones that need to be transposed into British secondary legislation.