Clause 3
Sustainable Communities Bill
3:00 pm
Oliver Letwin (West Dorset, Conservative)
I was not going to raise the embarrassing question of the £42 million, but the Minister raises it anyway. I do not agree that its estimation is not a science. There must now clearly be a fairly fully developed “Sir Humphrey” science of how to achieve the maximum possible figure that can be justified by any device when confronting the apparent costs of doing something that we do not want to do. That must be the counterpart of the equal science that has been developed to show the minimum impact of a new regulation when the Department wishes to bring about a new regulation, something that we see often in regulatory impact assessments. The Minister is simply lacking in scientific awareness.