Clause 19 - principles
Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill
9:00 am
David Heath (Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs & Shadow Leader of the House, Law Officers (Constitutional Affairs); Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
Good morning, Mr. Caton. As the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) said, we are now moving to a part of the Bill on which there is likely to be more consensus than there was on part 1. Indeed, if the Bill consisted only of parts 2 and 3, it would be considered uncontroversial or as something that might have gone through on a statutory instrument, rather than with the examination of the House.
Without wishing to repeat the points made by the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire—that would be entirely otiose—I support his contention that there is something extremely odd about subsection (3). A clear duty is laid out in subsections (1) and (2), but it is not expressed in detail; it is very general. It would be hard to argue that the regulator should act in a way that is not transparent, accountable, proportionate and consistent, and it would be hard to suggest that a regulator should target its activities at cases for which action is not needed.
Why do we need an exclusion and exemption that apparently allows some unknown regulator to have a requirement that falls outside those very general and benign categories? That does not make sense, unless there is a specific case that the Minister can tell us about to explain why that exemption is needed. Even then, he would need to persuade us that we should give licence to the Government to give a regulator powers that fall outside the very broad principles encapsulated in subsection (2).