Clause 27 - Regulations under Chapter 1: consultation
Waste and Emissions Trading Bill [Lords]
3:15 pm
Mr Norman Baker (Lewes, Liberal Democrat)
I beg to move amendment No. 17, in
clause 27, page 17, leave out lines 42 to 44.
This debate will be rather shorter than the previous one. I simply seek from the Government a statement on their policy on consultation. The Minister will know that we raised the issue earlier when I praised his Department's brave stand in resisting the Cabinet Office guidance and ploughing its own furrow.
The Bill gives the allocating authority—the Secretary of State in the case of England—the power not to consult if it concludes that those who might otherwise be affected will not, in a specific case, be affected by regulations that the Government want to amend. That seems quite reasonable, and I do not wish to demur from it. However, I have concerns. First, the analysis of whether an interest will be affected is rather subjective. The allocating authority may genuinely conclude that individuals are not affected, but those individuals may conclude that they are affected. We would find out the truth only once the regulation had been changed. That is not a happy state of affairs, and it is not how consultation should work.
There is also a potential legal problem. The Minister will be only too aware that there have been various legal judgments relating to consultation, not least that concerning the airports paper in which Gatwick was not included as a possible location for a new runway. The Government had to rerun that entire exercise. I am not sure whether that was right, but that was the judgment that was reached.
Clearly there is a legal aspect to consultation. I do not want to see a situation in which every single person is consulted about every single matter, and on the face of it the clause is quite reasonable, but I have two concerns about it. The first is that the legal framework in case law requires more consultation than the Government may be used to carrying out. Secondly, the interpretation of who is affected may mean that those who are genuinely affected are not consulted and find out about a change after it has been made.