Clause 31 - Commencement
Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill
2:30 pm
Jim Murphy (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Cabinet Office; East Renfrewshire, Labour)
It might be helpful to explain to the hon. Gentleman what is happening. I come to the point mentioned by the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper). Instead of one Minister at the centre of Government coming up with better proposals for regulation and simplification, every Department is now being challenged. With the creation of the panel for regulatory accountability, chaired by the Prime Minister, every Department must pursue simplification plans. Not just one Minister in one Department but every Department is doing that work.
Many of the documents respecting those specific proposals are already publicly available, and that must be welcomed. I am not aware that it has happened before. I do not seek to make a party political point; that is just part of the wider agenda of implementing simplification. It is welcomed by business, and Departments seem to be taking up the process enthusiastically. The Bill will enable the delivery of many of those simplification proposals and plans.
It might help the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire if I provided him with the Department of Trade and Industry plan, as he referred to the DTI in particular. I shall ensure that the publicly available DTI simplification plan is sent to him, so that he is aware of the specifics.
I strongly believe that having a sunset clause of the nature advocated by the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire would undermine our ability to drive the better regulation agenda throughout Government in a determined way. I am happy to make an undertaking that, as with the 2001 Act, a Minister of the Crown will report to the House no less than five years after enactment on the operation of the proposed Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act. A similar undertaking was given after the 2001 Act was passed, which led in part to the review of the Act and discussions about its effectiveness.
The hon. Member for Cambridge mentioned this general point, and I do not know whether it undermines his ability to vote for his own amendment: he accepts that under the Bill we would be implementing simplification proposals and lightening the burden on business. The way that his sunset clause is drafted, with no savings provision, means that anything delivered by the 2005 Act would be lost. He referred to that—in a different manner, of course.