Clause 1 - Purpose
Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill
9:45 am
Christopher Chope (Christchurch, Conservative)
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. This problem happened after Margaret Thatcher left office. Between 1992 and 1997, when I was no longer a Member of this House, the Major Government were interested in reducing the burden of regulation. I had the pleasure of serving on a deregulation task force to which I was appointed by the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, now Lord Heseltine. I was also on the Health and Safety Commission and saw with my own eyes the difficulties in trying to reduce the burden of regulation while at the same time maintaining proper standards of health and safety. The approach then was to try and rein back on detailed regulation and to introduce goal-setting regulations in the broader sense instead of having a minutiae of regulation.
Some progress was made during that period in reining back on regulation although nothing like as much as I would have wished. Since then, this Government, instead of relying on goal-setting regulations has implemented an enormous amount of detailed, prescriptive regulation, and that is the big burden on industry, which is getting worse. It got a bit better between 1992 and 1997, although new regulations were still being introduced, partly at the insistence of the European Union.
We could now revert to goal-setting, rather than prescriptive, regulation and if I heard the Minister saying things like that I would have more confidence that his purpose is to reduce the burden on industry, but nothing that he has said suggests that that is his purpose.