|
The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill [HC111], which is expected to have its Second Reading on 9 February, has the potential to be the most constitutionally significant Bill that has been brought before Parliament for some years. It needs to be scrutinised with particular care.
The Bill is promoted by the Cabinet Office as providing a means for Ministers to increase the pace of implementing the government's Better Regulation agenda. According to the Government, Part 1 of the Bill, which is the focus of this special report, seeks to tackle red tape and unnecessary regulations. This will be achieved by radically increasing the scope and power of the process of legislating by Order and by circumventing elements of the current parliamentary procedures. In broad terms, Part 1 of the Bill provides Ministers with a wide and general power to amend, repeal and replace all primary and secondary legislation, including legislation that may have been approved recently. There are few limits to this power. As with Regulatory Reform Orders (RROs), this power will be exercisable by means of Ministerial orders, but, it is now proposed that it will sometimes be subject to only negative resolution procedure. The Bill also provides Ministers with the power to change the common law by order.
Like the 2001 Regulatory Reform Act (RRA), which the Bill will replace, the Bill provides certain safeguards, but compared with the RRA, these safeguards and limits have generally been significantly reduced. For example, unlike under the RRA, the scope of the power will not be limited by a requirement on the Minister to identify "burdens" that will be removed or reduced. Also Ministers will not be prohibited from repealing, amending or replacing legislation that is less than two years old or from making orders that themselves sub-delegate the power to legislate. As under the RRA, the orders will be scrutinised by parliamentary committees, which will probably be successor committees to the Regulatory Reform Committee (RRC) in the Commons and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in the Lords. But compared with the current procedures, the Government is proposing a fast track procedure for some orders without including a converse power of the Committees to reject an order on the grounds that it is inappropriate for secondary legislation. It is expected that what safeguards are provided will be reinforced by Ministerial assurances. Overall, the proposed safeguards that are in the Bill are important, but in our view they are unlikely to provide sufficient counterbalance to the increased Ministerial powers that the Bill provides.
In view of the constitutional significance of Part 1 of the Bill, we have decided, despite the short time between First and Second Reading, to produce this report in order to report our views to the House in time for the Bill's Second Reading.
A summary of recommendations and conclusions is available from page 34.
|
