Clause 1 - Power by order to make provision reforming law which imposes burdens
Regulatory Reform Bill [Lords]
10:45 am
Mr Richard Page (South West Hertfordshire, Conservative)
I am delighted that you are chairing our proceedings, Mr. Cook. You always keep me in order and you are much stricter than other Chairman under whom I have served.
I start by declaring an interest. I have businesses, which groan and suffer because of the extra regulation that has required unnecessary bureaucratic time-wasting. My staff complain to me continually about the time they must spend dealing with regulations. I am delighted to be a member of the Committee and to try to bring about a reduction in the burdens that have increased dramatically during the past four years.
When I read the amendments, I was amazed, as always, at the Byzantine skills of parliamentary draftsmen and those who table amendments. The amendments have an arcane beauty and I usually have great difficulty following them. Amendments Nos. 36 and 35 must hang together because they cannot hang separately.
We are not against the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Cotter), although they seem to have an element of goldplating. I take the points made by him and by my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce) who said that the Bill will provide tremendous power above and beyond what is normally given to Committees and operations in the House. This Committee's responsibility is to ensure that that power will be used sensibly and correctly and will not be open to abuse.
It was difficult to appreciate what the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare said and to square that with the words of the noble Lord Goodhart, the Liberal Democrats spokesman when the Bill was discussed in the other place. On Second Reading he expressed strong views on some aspects of the Bill, particularly the first part. He said that paragraph (c) is objectionable because it
``would enable an order to be made to increase burdens without any offsetting removal of other burdens''
He continued:
``I am unhappy with a free-standing power to impose new burdens. I believe that the thrust of the Bill should be deregulation—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 December 2000; Vol. 620, c. 861.]
I know that my noble Friends in the other place were very much taken with the wise words of Lord Goodhart and supported some amendments. I commend that rare and unusual event of the Liberal Democrats working with the Conservative party—the Liberal Democrats are blood brothers with the Labour party and work with it daily. You will remember Mr. Cook, the enthusiasm with which the Liberal Democrat representative supported the Minister during the procedural debate the other day. He had to ask the Minister how he should vote to support the Labour party on that measure. You are giving me that steely look again, Mr. Cook, so I shall get back to the amendment.
The amendment would introduce subsection (3A) into the clause and refers to the orders being passed by both Deregulation Committees. We have to accept that those two Committees will not always be independent paragons of parliamentary procedure, unattacked by or unattached to party pressures. We have already seen how Committees, with their large majorities, can push through measures with which certain members of the Government may be unhappy.