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10.34 pm
Mr. Jim Dowd (Lewisham, West): As the Minister said, large parts of the order replicate for Northern Ireland much, although by no means all, of the parallel legislation for the rest of Great Britain, the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994. The objections that the Opposition raised to that legislation still apply.
When the then President of the Board of Trade, the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), introduced that measure, he said:
We agree with that.
Furthermore, we would go on to say that regulation, of itself, is neither good nor bad. It has no intrinsic merit and it is not necessarily harmful. Regulations have to be effective and responsive. There are good and bad regulations. When it comes to the burden of regulation, the Government certainly know how to regulate, but they seem to be unable to tell the difference between good and poor regulation.
The cost of dogmatic deregulation can, most topically, be clearly seen in the case of the deregulation of the rendering and animal feed industry. That has led directly to the spread of scrapie and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, with potential consequences for human health because of the link to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, putting lives and an entire industry at risk, with who knows what cost to the taxpayer.
Mr. Roy Beggs (East Antrim):
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is not the time for the Government to be considering contracting out tuberculin testing, which has traditionally been carried out by veterinary surgeons? Does he further agree that consumer confidence throughout the United Kingdom, which must be built up, is very much dependent on tuberculin testing being carried out by qualified veterinary surgeons, not contracted out to lay persons?
Mr. Dowd:
I share the hon. Gentleman's concern in large measure. We have recently seen the difficulties that
As far back as June 1989, the Government's consultative committee on research into spongiform encephalopathy, the Tyrrell committee, published a report which called for a survey of the brains of cattle routinely sent for slaughter in order to monitor the incidence of unrecognised infections. Despite repeated calls from the Opposition, the Government have ignored the advice of their scientists.
The Government also rejected Labour amendments to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 for the banning of advertisements for dangerous knives and weapons for which there is no conceivable legitimate use. They did so on the ground that the Advertising Standards Authority had power to deal with the problem.
When my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn(Mr. Straw), the shadow Home Secretary, brought to the attention of the ASA some specific advertisements for horrific weapons such as the Rambo short sword and the SAS shoulder holster knife, the chairman of the ASA, Lord Rodgers, stated that the authority had no powers to ban such advertising. The Government's reliance on that secondary measure was proved to be not only ill founded but completely untrue.
The Children Act 1989 stipulated the need to ensure that all those providing out-of-school activities were registered. This impacts on what I said earlier to the hon. Member for East Antrim (Mr. Beggs) about the Government's efforts being overtaken by events. The Government were right to introduce such a measure then and to relax the regulations covering the vetting of staff working with children in playgroups and other similar out-of-school activities would be little more than a perverts charter. Parents throughout the country would be horrified that the Government were even thinking of removing that protection from their young children. It was only the recent tragic and desperately horrific events in Dunblane that prompted that reconsideration of the Government's proposals.
The Minister mentioned removing the burden on business. In 1979, "Butterworth's Company Law", the almanac of company law, consisted of just under 500 pages. Its annexe described 80 different forms that a company may be called upon to fill in. The most recent edition of that textbook--I believe that the print size is identical--runs to more than 4,000 pages and the annexe contains 265 different forms that a company may be called upon to fill in.
To confirm the difficulties that small firms have over filling in too many forms, there is the example of a service sector firm with 25 employees which responded to the Association of British Chambers of Commerce small firms survey and said:
I draw the attention of the House to the fact that the Conservative party has been in office throughout that firm's lifetime. The quadrupling of time and effort put
into meeting regulations has taken place entirely under this Government. That helps us to learn much more about the Government's approach to deregulation. They have been responsible for much of the regulatory burden placed on small businesses.
The Department of Trade and Industry's deregulation task force identified 3,500 regulations that could do with significant amendment or abolition. More than 70 per cent. of those have been introduced since the Conservative party took office. This measure is truly a cure for a disease that is largely of the Government's making. There is a clear inability to recognise regulations that need to be lifted and those that are required, as the right hon. Member for Henley, then the President of the Board of Trade said, for our "advanced society".
The Government have made great play of how the private finance initiative will come to the aid of the public purse. The biggest potential area for partnerships between the public and private sectors is in local government. To be sure about the legality of deals with local authorities, potential private sector partners have to seek legal advice on parts IV and V of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989, 17 different sets of regulations and orders dealing the local authority capital finance and local authority companies and 15 sets of regulations dealing with the detail of capital finance. It is no surprise that the private finance initiative is languishing in such a manner.
Small firms have grappled with the uniform business rating system. Many firms thought that the idea of a uniform rate was a good one, but they have been put off by the system that the Government have created. Current legislation is contained in two statutes and 140 statutory instruments, many of them amending pre-existing regulations. Steve Cherry, British Telecom's head of rating and valuation, who represents the Confederation of British Industry on the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors national committee, said:
The Government have responded by blaming Brussels for the increase, certainly in recent years, in the amount of regulation going on to the statute book. In fact, fewer regulations come from Brussels than come from Whitehall.
The Internal Market Commissioner, Mr. Bangemann, has singled out the United Kingdom for being over-zealous in adopting too many national regulations to implement the single market programme. The Republic of Ireland has felt it necessary to enact only six pieces of legislation to enforce 415 European laws, while the United Kingdom has felt it necessary to enact 235 pieces of legislation. The Institute of Directors has called this process gold plating.
In March, a dairy farmer in Hampshire was forced to close because he could not afford to install new bottling equipment to meet the requirements of the 1992 European directive on dairy products. However, the Commission disclaimed all responsibility by pointing out that the law in question allowed the member state flexibility when interpreting the directive. Neither the local authority nor the Ministry of Agriculture, will take the blame.
Mr. Steen:
The hon. Gentleman is quite right to question the principle of gold plating. The Government
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes):
Order. The hon. Gentleman will have to tell the House later, as his intervention is too long.
Mr. Steen:
With respect, I am just getting to the point that I want to raise.
Madam Deputy Speaker:
I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman has passed the point.
"No advanced society can manage itself outside a regulatory framework. Indeed, it is impossible to contemplate the sophisticated assumptions on which we conduct our everyday lives without the underpinning of regulation."--[Official Report, 8 February 1994; Vol. 237, c. 147.]
"Please can we have less paper/form filling/regulations! We have been in business since 1982 and the amount of time taken out of management time to reply to letters/forms etc. has probably quadrupled."
"The rate demand on a property used to be easy to understand . . . The business community wishes to see a system which is clearer to operate."
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