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Ms Hewitt: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that we have been talking to our trade unions for several months about our plans to make our work force more efficient and to relocate some of our jobs.

Mr. O'Brien: It may be of some comfort to know that a fairly Chancellor-led surprise announcement was actually in train and that there were discussions with what the Secretary of State calls "our trade unions" rather than "the trade unions", which would be a more proper way of putting it. That is important.

Despite the Secretary of State's attempt to reassure us, it is equally important that, when the Government issue announcements about job cuts in the public sector, including the way that they slip out news about sackings from her own Department, they should be judged by their deeds. At the very least, they should adopt for their Departments the standards that she seeks to impose through the Bill on other employers, especially those in the private sector who are risk takers as opposed to the non-wealth-creating public sector [Interruption.] Labour Members hate hearing that. They do not like to be rumbled, because the Bill is an effort to dress up something to do with their electoral advantage, as they define it, rather than a true concern for good business, good employment and good, safe jobs.

The other highly flawed provision in the Bill is the incorporation of the information and consultation directive in UK law. In that regard, I refer again to the regulatory impact assessment published in conjunction with the Bill. Incidentally, I make no apologies for my repeated references to the impact of regulation. On the Opposition Benches, we take that very seriously indeed, although I confess that I would have more faith in the reliability of RIAs if even one burdensome regulation had been aborted as a result of that procedure. I asked the Secretary of State about that in a written question, but she relied on her Cabinet Office colleague, who declined to give even one such example. The Minister for the Cabinet Office stated:

"There are no cross-government figures on the number of RIAs that resulted in decisions not to proceed with new regulations." [Official Report, 2 February 2004; Vol. 417, c. 715W.]

Even the tentative quantification of the RIA cannot disguise the fact that the one-off costs to business of implementing the measure will be £45 million and that

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the recurring annual costs will be £46 million. This single measure alone accounts for more than 75 per cent. of the recurring regulatory costs of the entire Employment Relations Act 1999, which was itself a costly piece of legislation for British business. I hope that the Secretary of State will reconsider the belief, which she expressed on Second Reading, that the costs of the Bill to employers are broadly "insignificant". In her speech this evening, she said that the amendments subsequently proposed would not add a significant cost to businesses.

Ms Hewitt: I am puzzled. I understand that the hon. Gentleman is against the union modernisation fund; that is a clear dividing line. But is he also telling the House that he is against the information and consultation provisions?

Mr. O'Brien: Perhaps the Secretary of State should hold her breath. I am just about to develop why the Government have chosen to implement the information and consultation directive in a form much broader than was sought in respect of its imposition on this country. As the director general of the CBI has noted, the directive is

"a poor piece of EU legislation".

The fact that the Government lack the will and the influence in Brussels to refine an evidently crude directive at its inception is therefore regrettable, as is their lack of a requirement for a full regulatory impact assessment of that or any other EU regulation while it is being drawn up despite the fact that it is at that stage that the Government can do most to influence a directive's nature and outcome. Theirs is an oddly relaxed attitude, given that about 40 per cent. of UK regulations that originate in Brussels are more costly to British business than those that originate in this place.

Even more galling is the way in which the Government manage to make the worst of a bad situation by transcribing burdensome directives into UK law with disproportionate zeal. There is no reason why the information and consultation directive should not have been introduced via a statutory instrument indeed, it is unusual to introduce such a directive by primary legislation and to give the Secretary of State significant powers to

"make any provision which appears . . . to be necessary or expedient".

Why have the Government taken such wide-ranging powers when they did not want the directive in the first place? Lord Sainsbury of Turville a DTI Minister is on the record as saying that

"a general framework for informing and consulting employees in the European Community . . . is difficult to reconcile with subsidiarity and would cut across member state traditions to no benefit." [Official Report, House of Lords, 5 March 2001; Vol. 623, c. WA 14.]

If the Government are capable of so vigorously to the tune of £45 million a year gold-plating legislation of which they do not even approve, it is terrifying to consider how they implement regulation that they endorse. That goes some way to explaining the BCC figure I mentioned earlier that the cost of regulation on British business has rocketed by £9 billion in the past 12 months alone.

What began as a non-Bill has ended up as a stealth Bill, which will serve to strengthen the unions' power and the Labour party's purported links to them, and

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to weaken both British business and Parliament. It is an abuse of taxpayers' money and of the scrutiny procedures of this House. One of the few positive notes that can be struck is that it represents a powerful and definitive argument for the two excellent ten-minute Bills recently presented by Back-Bench Members of the official Opposition, my hon. Friends the Members for Huntingdon and for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman).

The Bill presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon was designed to eradicate precisely the thoughtless bureaucratic gold-plating of EU directives that the Bill embodies in relation to the information and consultation directive. The European Communities (Deregulation) Bill declares that provisions of regulations will not have to be enforced if it can be proved that they will impose higher compliance costs or a heavier sanction for failure to comply than in other EU member states. That is a constructive and commendable approach to over-burdensome EU regulation, and any Government interested in our British national interest should take my hon. Friend's Bill seriously.

Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham) (Con): My hon. Friend is delivering a racy and intoxicating speech to which I hope I can add. Does he agree that it is most regrettable that the pioneering stance on sunset regulation adopted by the right hon. Member for Tyneside, North (Mr. Byers) when he was Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, as reflected in the Electronic Communications Act 2000, has since been abandoned and the Government are now adopting a tepid and reactionary attitude that fails to give the proper opportunity to minimise regulation in the way that the example of the United States teaches us is beneficial to industry and commerce?

Mr. O'Brien: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It is nice to know that a speech can be intoxicating, although I assure the House that, at this stage of the day, I have not had the benefit of anything intoxicating to help me along. More important, he can be reassured that a presumption in favour of sunset clauses is a plank in the official Opposition's proposals to aid the British economy and British business, and that presumption will not be ditched for the sake of expediency.

The Government ignored the Bill presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon. Yet again, they displayed their indifference to the needs of British business. With reference to the disgraceful way in which the union modernisation fund was announced, it is clear that the suggestion made by my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells of a system of post-implementation audits for RIAs, as set out in his Regulatory Impact Assessments (Audits) Bill, would prevent Ministers from getting away with the shameful practice of signing off RIAs, only to table amendments later that impose potentially vast additional costs on the taxpayer. Indeed, my hon. Friend also provided for the fact that those who promote a Bill and who argue in

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favour of its benefits cannot be expected to be trusted to be impartial about the costs. Again, there was no squeak of interest from the Secretary of State or her Government colleagues. I know that my colleagues in the other place will be interested in pursuing all these points.

As presented on Second Reading, the Bill was unnecessary. Now, as predicted by the Opposition and feared by British business, it has become costly, nannying, preachy and burdensome. It is highly unlikely that it will influence a few bad employers. It will increase burdens on already good employers and give comfort to the few bad unions. The Bill is a product of the distorted priorities of those who sponsored it a Government who are desperate to curry favour with their paymaster unions and a Department that is structurally indifferent to the flexible and fair needs of British business and wealth-creating small businesses, especially those employing fewer than 50 people. Above all, it is not even-handed between employer and employee. Had we been able to debate amendment No. 7, I know that that issue would have been taken seriously in another place. It is appropriately known as the Miller amendment.

It is no accident that the resource budget for employment relations of the Department of Trade and Industry has more than tripled since 1998, while the allocation for innovation has fallen by 7 per cent. over the same period. It is a matter of fact that the Secretary of State, like her Department, is on the side of the regulators and against enterprising British entrepreneurs and innovators. Unless and until there is a re-evaluation of the purpose and priorities of the Department, I believe that businesses will continue to suffer. The Bill is the latest in a litany of measures that the Government have introduced to burden British business. Unless it is defeated this evening I urge my colleagues and all other Members to join me in the No Lobby it will sit as another glaring indictment on the charge sheet against this Labour Government and this Secretary of State.

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