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Mr. Bercow: I am grateful to the Minister for that confirmation.
I attempted, as a modest Back-Bench Member, to improve the situation by introducing a ten-minute Bill on regulation on business. I wanted to call it the Lifting Burdens from Small Firms Bill, but was advised by the esteemed officials of the House that that would have been too evaluative a title. Those in a position to advise me suggested that it should be the Regulations on Small Businesses (Reduction) Bill, and I had the great pleasure of introducing it on 27 April.
The Bill was intended to be constructive and reflected many constituency representations. It made six proposals to improve the regulatory situation. First, it requested, for the benefit of enterprising and innovative businesses, that there should be an annual statement to Parliament of the cost of regulation on business and of the Government's plans to reduce the cost in the following year. I was horrified to learn from a written reply from the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office that the Government made no such statement in any form, and had no intention of doing so. I therefore emphasised the first point in my eminently reasonable Bill with particular force. Clearly, we need to know what the costs are, whether or not the Government plan to reduce them, and if they do, by how much.
Secondly, I asked that Parliament should be apprised every six months of the progress of any deregulatory initiatives, the steps taken by the Government and their calculation of the effect of those steps. Thirdly, I requested a review of existing regulation to see where gold-plating of European directives and regulations was taking place and where there might be scope to remove or simplify regulations. Fourthly, I suggested exemption from the most burdensome regulations for the smallest firms.
Fifthly, I proposed a system of sunset regulation under which regulations would automatically expire after a given period--three or five years--if they were not of sufficient merit to be re-enacted by Parliament. That proposal was based on the American model, which applies successfully at state and federal level. I drew the House's attention to the basis of the American model--the Regulatory Flexibility Act 1980 and the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act 1996.
Sixthly, my Bill proposed a minimum of three months' consultation on proposed regulations, and a minimum three months' notice of a requirement to implement them. The proposals were sensible, and I received warm support in my constituency and encouragement from a range of business organisations. Members of the public who had listened to the presentation of the Bill wrote to say that it was good sense and that it should not be a matter of party political dispute. I had addressed a problem and proposed a solution. People hoped that the Government would accept it as a non-partisan solution.
There was no frothing at the mouth in my proposals. The Minister of State regularly portrays my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton and me as right-wing firebrands, but my hon. Friends know that we are consensually minded figures who hold relatively middle-of-the-road views on many matters of public policy. We were simply seeking to identify a problem in detail and propose an effective solution. I hoped that I would get a helpful response.
Regrettably, the signs have been confusing. On 25 March, the Minister wrote to me in response to queries that I put to him in the Employment Relations Bill
Committee about the American model. He described it somewhat dismissively as "highly prescriptive", and talked about the importance of rooting British policy in British traditions. That is so vague as to be largely meaningless. He inferred--I put no more strongly--that the Government did not propose to adopt my model.
Mr. Bercow:
I thought that the Minister inferred it, but if he wants to say that he implied it, I am happy to accept that. Moreover, a month later, on 27 April, after the presentation of my Bill, I had a brief chat with him. He said to me, "Right diagnosis, wrong prescription." That was explicit. It seemed obvious then that Ministers did not intend to heed my words or apply the measures recommended in my Bill.
Since then, the situation has become curiouser and curiouser. We have now had pronouncements on this important matter from the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. My Bill was commended to him by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) and, in the course of a parliamentary exchange, the Secretary of State invited me to send him a copy of my Bill and the speech accompanying its presentation with a view to him considering its proposals. It is now 36 days since I wrote to him and, while I have not yet had a response, I feel sure that one is winging its way to me. I shall soon be put out of my misery and learn whether he was impressed.
We have had some anecdotal evidence in the interim that is important for the future of small and medium-sized enterprises that want to prosper and seek to innovate. To his credit, the Secretary of State has admitted that the Government have not got it right on regulation. He gave an interview to The Daily Telegraph or The Sunday Telegraph on the subject and repeated the point on 20 April to the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, of which I happen to be a member. He admitted that the Government have not got it right and would have to do better.
I have still had no response to my letter of 20 May. I then chanced upon the Secretary of State's seminal speech to British Chambers of Commerce on 3 June. Whether it is indicative of a likely improvement in Government policy, we do not yet know. It would be premature to say that Government policy has changed for the better because, although there were encouraging words, they were only words. We do not know whether action to match them will follow. Interestingly, he said that, too often, regulations had been introduced with too little consultation and too little warning. I felt vindicated. A mere Back Bencher discovers that his words are echoed by one of the mightiest men in the land. Suddenly, the Secretary of State says with all the authority of his high office to a large audience at British Chambers of Commerce conference what I have been saying for some time to a not-always-packed House and to other audiences. He went on to say that we had to think small first--I must emphasise that I think that he was referring to small businesses rather than to my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) or to me. We had to think of small businesses first.
I was supremely encouraged when he said that he found the idea of sunset regulation attractive. At the meeting of the Trade and Industry Committee on 4 November last year, in response to questioning from me, the right hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson), then the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, somewhat pooh-poohed the notion of sunset regulation. Indeed, I am sure that the Under-Secretary will not mind if I point out that, in the first instance, the right hon. Member for Hartlepool did not even know what sunset regulation was. I was astonished. I was flabbergasted. I was under the impression that he knew all about the American model. He talked regularly about his visits to the United States. A few days before his appearance before the Select Committee, he had made a speech in which he talked about US enterprise and dynamism. I asked him about sunset regulation, to which he replied, "By which you mean?" I had to explain to the most illustrious representative of new Labour exactly what sunset regulation meant.
One cannot accuse the present incumbent of such woeful ignorance. The Secretary of State knows what sunset regulation is. In his most recent speech on the subject, he said that he found the idea attractive. That is most confusing, because the Under-Secretary gave the distinct impression--obviously not inadvertently, but deliberately--that the Government did not intend to emulate the American model. There is a split between the Under-Secretary on one hand and the Secretary of State on the other.
Mr. Bercow:
I readily give way to the Under-Secretary. I can see that he is in a state of some perturbation.
Mr. Wills:
I hate to see the hon. Gentleman suffering in this way. Let me try to put him out of his misery. Perhaps that will enable him to move on to something else in his most interesting speech. To clarify the point, I suggested that we were not going to adopt American legislation in this country, for the reasons already cited by the hon. Gentleman. Let me make that quite clear: American legislation in this country--not.
Mr. Bercow:
I fear that the hon. Gentleman digs himself deeper in. He is wobbling. The idea that American legislation could be directly implemented in the United Kingdom is patently absurd. We are not talking about the transposition of European Union directives and regulations into British law. The issue was whether we would follow the American model. I counsel the hon. Gentleman--for whom I have considerable affection, because he was immensely courteous during the Committee proceedings of the Employment Relations Bill--to take note of the old adage: better to remain silent and look a fool than speak and remove any lingering doubt. The hon. Gentleman is on weak ground; he knows perfectly well that he was against the American model. The Secretary of State is now making noises that give the impression that he is in favour of that model. What we do not know is whether the words about the American model will be translated into practical reality. That is what we want to know.
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