Clause 15 - Guidance
Local Government Bill
11:00 am
Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 42, in
clause 15, page 6, line 24, leave out from beginning to end of line 26 and add,
'to such guidance as the Secretary of State may by regulations specify for the purposes of this provision, whether or not issued by him.'.
The amendment provides a good opportunity to probe the Minister's intention in relation to guidance and regulations. On the whole, the purist in me says that wherever possible legislation should be made by primary legislation, not by guidance or regulations and certainly not by directions, as we will see later in the Bill. More than half of all the legislation last year went through in the form of secondary legislation. There were more than 4,000 items, many of them completely undebated. A small part went through by negative procedure under a statutory instrument and received only cursory scrutiny. We, therefore, need to probe the Minister every time a Bill refers to regulations.
The Minister has been very courteous in producing draft regulations for the Bill in plenty of time for the Committee to debate them, unlike his colleague on the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill. However, I do not believe that we have had sight of any draft regulations on this clause. Perhaps the Under-Secretary can give us an idea of what he expects might be in such regulations. It will not have escaped the notice of the Committee that there is a difference between subsections (a) and (b). Whereas subsection (a) refers to
''such guidance as the Secretary of State may issue'',
subsection (b) refers to
''such other guidance as the Secretary of State may by regulations specify for the purposes of this provision.''
There is a difference. Under one subsection the Secretary of State can issue guidance such as he sees fit, in the other it has to be by regulations which presumably must go through this House and receive some scrutiny.
I understand from my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge that in the Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill the Minister accepted and made directions subject to scrutiny, in other words subject to regulations. It would be useful to probe the Government's consistency as to how they intend to draw up the guidance and whether it is by regulations. I do not quite see why the entire paragraph should not be by regulations but it would be interesting to know the Under-Secretary's thinking on this matter.