Clause 22 - Functions to which sections 19 and 22 apply
Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill
10:00 am
David Heath (Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs & Shadow Leader of the House, Law Officers (Constitutional Affairs); Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
I shall be brief. I simply want an explanation of the list in subsection (5). We have already gone through the process iteratively with clauses 19 and 20 with regard to the need to exempt some of our most important regulators from provisions that are supposed to regulate the regulators. We now have a new group of “off-limits” that are not to be regulated. I looked for further guidance in the explanatory notes and in paragraph 70 it says that the reason why the order may not specify regulatory functions on these five bodies is:
“The Minister cannot specify in the order the regulatory functions”
of those five bodies, which, as an explanation, falls a little short of what is required. I would be grateful if the Minister expanded on that a little.