Clause 1 - Purpose
Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill
11:00 am
Oliver Heald (Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs & Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Assisted By Shadow Solicitor General), Constitutional Affairs; North East Hertfordshire, Conservative)
I agree with the hon. Member for Cambridge about providing adequate safeguards; it is right to look at the purpose of reforms of the law. This first group of amendments, tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch and for Forest of Dean and me, is about focusing the order-making power on deregulation, and, for Law Commission Bills, restricting the power to Bills that have been drafted in a particular form, and not allowing the Government to expand them into other areas.
It may help if I explain that new clause 2 and new schedule 1 deal with the second limb, restricting the Government’s order-making power by subject matter. We may reach that point this afternoon. The procedural way of tackling it—a veto to stop inappropriate measures being taken through the order-making power—is dealt with in new clause 3. On the overall question of whether such order-making powers should be allowed to continue for ever, we suggest in new clause 6 a sunset provision that would limit it to five years. Amendment No. 33 to clause 2, which we may reach later today and which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, would not allow sub-delegation.
There is a measure of agreement between the official Opposition and the Liberal Democrats about the way in which we should be looking at these particular issues. I note that some starred amendments focus on the same basic structure.
I start with amendment No. 20 and new clause 4. Amendment No. 20 is designed to focus the order-making power on the removal or reduction of burdens, and the other references to burdens in the Regulatory Reform Act 2001. If the amendment were to be accepted, subsection (1) would read as follows:
“A Minister of the Crown may by order make provision for either or both of the following purposes—
(a) reforming legislation for
(i) the removal and reduction of any burden,
followed by other provisions in the amendment, which are taken from the 2001 Act. To put it in common parlance, it would focus on reforms of the law that have a deregulatory effect.
New clause 4 defines burden more widely than the 2001 Act, because the consultation exercise that took place after the review of that Act made it clear that its definition of burden was too restrictive. We have gone with that logic. Yes, we should remove burdens but we should also widen the ambit of the word to include the inconvenience and the administrative costs that can be imposed on businesses as a result of regulation. New clause 4 and amendment No. 20 go together.