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)
I agree entirely. If we are to set out principles on which we agree, we cannot trim them to meet the statute; if it falls outside them, the statute must be altered to meet the principle, otherwise the Bill and the clause are pointless. I hope that the Minister will explain subsection (3). To save time, I should say that there is a similar provision in subsection (3) of the following clause, and I would not wish us to have exactly the same debate twice. That subsection, again, contains the exception that another requirement may require the regulatory function to fall outside the code of conduct, which, of course, derives from the principles in clause 19.
If we are to have a code of conduct, we cannot have a particular regulator saying, “I read your code of conduct but I am required to act in this untransparent, unaccountable, disproportionate and inconsistent way because the Minister who set up the regulatory function chose to couch our requirements in that way”. The Minister must address that issue. I hope that I have not strayed too far into the next clause stand part debate in suggesting that consolidating the two debates might help the Committee.