Clause 55 - Orders and regulations
Animal Welfare Bill
1:00 pm
Bill Wiggin (Shadow Minister (Agriculture & Fisheries), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Leominster, Conservative)
I suspect that the hon. Member for Lewes is trying to protect the corgis, rather than attack them.
The three amendments are intended to harmonise procedure for enacting secondary legislation in the Bill, which has different procedures for the enactment of regulation, codes of practice and licensing and registration regimes. That may well be inconsistent. Many controversial and contentious matters could be included in secondary legislation, so it is important that there should be an onus to debate and approve matters positively rather than introducing some through the negative procedure.
Although I acknowledge that that may be a small burden on parliamentary time, I am conscious of the need to make sure that such regulations, codes of practice and licensing registration regimes are fair and effective. In addition, I believe that Parliament should scrutinise secondary legislation enacted for not only its content but its method. We have been through a lot of this debate before.
Given that the Government have already set themselves a target in the Bill’s regulatory impact assessment to introduce most of the required secondary legislation within the next few years, they might, in their haste, make mistakes, or they may not consult as fully or widely as we would want. The amendment would reduce the possibility of legislative short cuts, enhance the democratic accountability of the Government and strengthen our democracy.