Clause 61 - Applications for registration on the general register: childminders
Childcare Bill
9:15 am
Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Conservative)
I want to explore the issue of fees. Subsection (2)(c) states that any registration will be accompanied by a “prescribed fee”, but I have a general concern about regulatory bodies raising fees. It sounds reasonable that such a body should cover its costs or “wash its face”, to use the jargon. There is, however, no downward pressure on fees and no marketplace to ensure that they are kept under control and do not become unreasonable, yet we in the House of Commons tend to think that a regulatory body that covers its costs through fees must be run efficiently and that the costs of running it will not burden the taxpayer.
In essence, however, such fees are a form of taxation, because it is compulsory to register with the body set out in the Bill. There is no plethora of bodies from which to choose, so one cannot choose to register with the one with the lowest fee. This taxation rate is not, however, subject to the same deliberations as income tax rates or VAT rates; it is prescribed by the regulatory body itself, perhaps with a statutory instrument or some other form of regulation that is not scrutinised in great detail in the House. Provided that the body does no more than cover its costs, we are all meant to regard its behaviour as reasonable. However, the costs sometimes spiral out of control, because bodies empire build or employ more and more people to carry out their functions. The costs are simply burdened on to the bodies that have to pay them, with no recourse to Parliament.
However worthy a regulatory burden is—in this case, it clearly is worthy—we should be careful about introducing a fee to cover the costs of regulatory bodies. There is an argument for saying—this is really a probing argument—that this is, perhaps, an issue for the general taxpayer. In that way, Ministers will keep control over the costs of such bodies and we will not build into our mindset the notion that because the fees cover the costs, they are not a matter for the Minister, the Department or the House of Commons.