Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill |
|
The Chairman: Definitely, yes. Mr. Heald: I even hear the Chairman saying, “Definitely, yes.” The Chairman: That was a slightly different question. Mr. Heald: I realise that you would be unable to comment, Sir Nicholas. A sunset clause is a last-ditch attempt to put at least some protection or roadblock in place. The real answer would be for the Minister to come back on Report with the strong safeguards that everybody wants. David Howarth: I agree with everything that the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire said. I am glad that he is following the threefold exposition of the types of protection that we are looking for that I proposed in my speech on the programme motion, which now seems a very long time ago. He is correct that concern about the Bill is growing. The Government have staunchly resisted any suggestion that the purposes for which the Bill can be used should be restricted in any way. They have also resisted any suggestion that its subject-matter should be restricted. The only matter on which they have given way is the possibility of procedural protections, and the only protection that they favour, or at least are willing to examine, is not as great as it should be because the Government hold a majority in the Committees of the House. The alternative method of procedural protection that I put forward, whereby a certain number of Members of the House could block the use of the Bill, has not been accepted. It seems that we are in the last ditch in our attempt to insert a sunset clause, although I should like to make a couple of comments when we come to clause 33 on the short title of the Bill. The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire made a good point. We need to ask the Government, “Why do you want these powers, and why do you want
The Committee should realise that the sunset clause has a defect: the limit applies to the power to make the orders, but not to the orders made under it. If orders were passed that were inappropriate or highly controversial—or even subversive of the constitution—they would still be valid even once the powers of the Bill to make such orders had lapsed under the sunset clause. Nevertheless, it would be worth withdrawing that power after a limited time—in other words, it would give the Government five years to subvert the constitution, and if they had not done it by then the power to do so would cease. I am worried that the Government want to be able to exercise those powers for such a long period. My feeling is that they want them not for specific purposes but just in case something crops up for which they need a wider power. However, the wider ambitions are not specified at this point. Opposition Members sometimes wonder whether the Government have some specific wider ambitions but are not telling us about them. I am coming to the view that that is not so—that they do not know what their wider ambitions are, and that they are asking for those powers just in case they need them, or want them. In addition, the Cabinet Office does not get all that many opportunities to bring Bills before the House, and it does not know what sort of problems it will be required to address in future. Just in case, it has brought us a Bill that is drafted as broadly as possible. I offer my support and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome for the sunset clause in the knowledge that it is not a perfect solution. It is the last ditch, and I hope that the Government take the opportunity at least to offer some hope to those of us who feel that the Bill is dangerous. Mr. Chope: I, too, support new clause 6. The Bill is part of a pattern. Sir Nicholas, you were in the Chamber during business questions today and heard the Leader of the House tell me that proposals are circulating in Government that are designed to restrict the power of Members to ask ordinary written questions. The Leader of the House admitted as much today. Why are the Government seeking to rein back on the power of Members of the House to legislate, ask questions and try to hold the Executive to account? We are debating the Bill in a very unhealthy atmosphere. Mr. Heald: The hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) was quite charitable about what the Government’s aims might be. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that at the end of his period of tenure, the Prime Minister will become frustrated with
The Chairman: Order. Will the hon. Gentleman address the Chair, as my age has made me slightly hard of hearing? Mr. Heald: Yes, Sir Nicholas. The Prime Minister wants to get rid of the fuss and nonsense that gets in the way of the Napoleonic vision of the “great leader”. Mr. Chope: One could almost sum up the attitude of the Prime Minister as follows: it is unfortunate that Members of Parliament, and particularly Labour Members, are a legal necessity. He would like to do away with all that. My hon. Friend is too charitable in saying that it is simply frustration on the part of the Prime Minister. I suspect that he finds the whole process too burdensome and that he would like to spend more time with his family—or less time in the House, answering for the Government’s failures. Mr. Heald: Does my hon. Friend agree that the Prime Minister often says that every time he has made a change he always wished that he had gone further? Under the Bill, he will be able to go as far as he can see and then go further still using the order-making power of the Bill to build on that platform. If the Education Bill is slightly damaged by the rebels, when it comes to the crunch once it is in statute, he could just use one of those orders to get in all the rest of it. The Chairman: I have allowed that intervention, but I do not think that we should pursue that line of argument. Mr. Chope: New clause 6 would introduce a sunset after five years. I wonder whether that might still be during the course of this Parliament if the powers in the Bill are used. It has the power to extend Parliament beyond five years. That may be for the convenience of the Prime Minister. New clause 6 is generous, because it offers five years. If the Bill goes through in anything like its present form—I am sure that it will encounter much difficulty during its remaining stages in this House and the other place—I hope that he will be able to persuade the incoming Conservative Government that, in a period of much less than five years, part 1 of the Bill should be scrapped in toto. I hope that it will be an early undertaking for the Leader of the Opposition in his quest for power. Mr. Heath: Setting aside the hon. Gentleman’s optimistic view of the chances of the Conservative party forming another Administration, will he accept—this is not a party political point—that no Government of any hue shall dispense lightly with those extraordinary powers? That is precisely our problem. Any Government would be tempted to keep rules that allow them to do almost what they want with their parliamentary majority without the threat of parliamentary scrutiny. Column Number: 287 Mr. Chope: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I shall explain why I concede his point. When I was first on Wandsworth council, in 1977, we as an opposition so provoked the incumbent Labour majority that it brought in a guillotine. It introduced the guillotine just before the May 1978 elections, and ever since, that guillotine has been used very effectively by the Conservative majority on the council. That is what happens. That is why it is essential that with powers as great as those in the Bill, we should have a clear and collective undertaking from the Opposition parties that they intend to repeal the legislation within—I hope—five years. Mr. Murphy: I have enjoyed listening to some of the debate and conjecture from Opposition Members. To some extent, it was a rerun of parts of the debate that we had in our part 1 deliberations. I shall seek not to rehearse all aspects of part 1, because we had that debate at length for four sittings. You will keep me in order if I wander from the debate, Sir Nicholas. Clause 31 sets out when the provisions of this legislation come into effect, which is at the end of the period of two months beginning the day on which the Bill is enacted. Technically, that means two months after Royal Assent. That follows the general rule that Acts should not come into force until two months after they have been passed. New clause 6, moved by the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire, draws on the suggestion that we should have a sunset clause. Hon. Members on both sides will not be surprised to hear that I am firmly against the idea of sunsetting part 1. To set an arbitrary date for the expiry of part 1 would, for the reasons that I am about to give, be wholly inappropriate. I spoke at our first sitting about the need to change the culture across Whitehall in terms of the better regulation agenda, the need to build a momentum, and the need for an enormous amount of work, energy and effort, to alter the way in which Whitehall and others approach better regulation. Having a sunset clause for part 1 of the Bill would greatly undermine our ability to do that and create uncertainty about the longevity of part 1. 2.30 pmMr. Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con): There is an alternative way in which the Minister could look at the situation. If civil servants knew that the Bill was only going to be enforced for five years, it could be looked upon as a spur to get them to introduce deregulatory matters more speedily, knowing that that opportunity would end after five years. It could act as a spur to efficiency. Mr. Murphy: That would be a fair point if the better regulation agenda was temporary and only lasted five years. Our intention of course is to ensure that we deliver on simplification, better regulation— Mr. Harper: For ever. Column Number: 288 Mr. Murphy: Well, last week we joked about the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) and a Ming dynasty, which I think lasted for 276 years. The point made by the hon. Gentleman would be fair, if our ambition and determination to deliver on better regulation had a time limit. We want to deliver a change in culture and in the way in which Whitehall regulates, and to maintain a momentum. Our assessment is that a sunset clause would affect our ability to deliver that change in culture, to get the investment and prioritisation across Whitehall, to invest resources, time and energy, and to engage senior people with the agenda. A sunset clause would create uncertainty in our ability to deliver and would stall our momentum. Of course, our intention immediately after this legislation is enacted will be to start to deliver on the Government’s simplification plans. We expect that as we implement the first set of plans that come out of Departments, we will challenge those Departments to come up with additional plans to remove unnecessary bureaucracy, outdated regulations and unnecessary burdens. Mr. Harper: Taking that point further, what the Minister seems to be saying is that the Bill will create a perpetual motion machine in which, on one hand, half of the Government and civil service will be busy creating complicated Bills that are difficult to understand and that will impose burdens, and on the other hand there will be a diligent Minister with a team of civil servants creating orders to sweep away the complexity created by the other part of Government. If he can implement a culture change, surely the Government’s legislative measures will be more simple and straight forward, and less burdensome in the first place, so the necessity, once the step change has been made, for powers to sweep away that complexity will end. Mr. Murphy: In addition to the simplification plans, when the Government introduce a new proposal, we will seek to identify offsetting measures. That will be part of the culture change within Government. Mr. Heald: But only a month or so a go, the Department of Trade and Industry set out its list of new proposed regulations. The list ran to 40 pages. Why was there not a similar list of measures that were going to be scrapped? Mr. Murphy: The DTI has published its simplification plan. I think that it is a publicly available document, but I will undertake to send the hon. Gentleman a copy of the DTI’s simplification plan in which it identified ways in which they could introduce offsetting measures, simplify legislation and reduce unnecessary bureaucracy and burdens. Mr. Heald: I think that the Minister might have misunderstood my point. The DTI publishes a list of all Government regulations proposed for the two dates that there are for regulations to be made. This year, that list runs to 30 pages—it is not just for the DTI. I
Mr. Murphy: It might be helpful to explain to the hon. Gentleman what is happening. I come to the point mentioned by the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper). Instead of one Minister at the centre of Government coming up with better proposals for regulation and simplification, every Department is now being challenged. With the creation of the panel for regulatory accountability, chaired by the Prime Minister, every Department must pursue simplification plans. Not just one Minister in one Department but every Department is doing that work. Many of the documents respecting those specific proposals are already publicly available, and that must be welcomed. I am not aware that it has happened before. I do not seek to make a party political point; that is just part of the wider agenda of implementing simplification. It is welcomed by business, and Departments seem to be taking up the process enthusiastically. The Bill will enable the delivery of many of those simplification proposals and plans. It might help the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire if I provided him with the Department of Trade and Industry plan, as he referred to the DTI in particular. I shall ensure that the publicly available DTI simplification plan is sent to him, so that he is aware of the specifics. I strongly believe that having a sunset clause of the nature advocated by the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire would undermine our ability to drive the better regulation agenda throughout Government in a determined way. I am happy to make an undertaking that, as with the 2001 Act, a Minister of the Crown will report to the House no less than five years after enactment on the operation of the proposed Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act. A similar undertaking was given after the 2001 Act was passed, which led in part to the review of the Act and discussions about its effectiveness. The hon. Member for Cambridge mentioned this general point, and I do not know whether it undermines his ability to vote for his own amendment: he accepts that under the Bill we would be implementing simplification proposals and lightening the burden on business. The way that his sunset clause is drafted, with no savings provision, means that anything delivered by the 2005 Act would be lost. He referred to that—in a different manner, of course. David Howarth: That is not my interpretation of the new clause, although what the Minister says is of course a possible interpretation. If he is now engaged in discussing drafting points, perhaps he will accept the point of the clause and come back to it on Report. Column Number: 290 Mr. Murphy: No. As I said, that is not the significant point that I wished to make; it is a matter of the way that it is drafted. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to, he may check that I said that. It was a specific point about the way that he drafted the new clause, and I wondered whether he was aware of it. For example, clause 28(4) of the Bill is a savings provision respecting the 27 orders delivered under the 2001 Act. Those orders would be saved by virtue of clause 28(4), but in the absence of a similar savings provision in his new clause, any meaningful simplification plans delivered or burdens lightened—even those that the hon. Gentleman might support—would be lost as a consequence of his new clause. Mr. Chope: The Minister has attacked my hon. Friend’s new clause, but can he address whether he believes as a matter of principle that sunsetting is a good way of restricting the burden of regulation? Mr. Murphy: I do not think that the comments that I made about the drafting of the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire could be misconstrued in any way as an attack. They were a gentle probe. The new clause is technically inefficient in its drafting. The Bill has a savings provision— Mr. Chope: I think that the Minister has misunderstood my intervention. I wanted to find out whether the Minister believes in the principle that an effective way of reducing the burden of regulation is to ensure that any regulations that are made are subject to sunset clauses. Does the Minister agree that that is a useful proposition or not? Mr. Murphy: In general I do not. One of the things that we all hear from the business community and others about regulation is that common commencement dates for regulations are needed. We are moving on that, which is generally welcome. Hon. Members on both sides will find that small businesses in their constituencies welcome common commencement dates and we may wish to go further than that. But to have as a norm a sunset clause on simplification and better regulation proposals would create an enormous degree of uncertainty. In the past we had situations where businesses quite rightly said that we had to seek legal advice about when proposals were coming into force and that has been dealt with in some part by common commencement dates. With automatic sunsetting clauses businesses would have to seek advice from accountants and others about the date on which those simplification and better regulation proposals are sunsetted. Mr. Heald: But is it not the Cabinet Office that has asked Sir Roger Toulson and the Law Commission to engage in a consultation on post-legislative scrutiny, which includes ideas such as sunsetting and the like? Can the Minister really set his face against that, particularly when the consultation has only just started? There was an excellent seminar last week in which the Law Commission explained that it was
Mr. Murphy: As I said in response to the hon. Member for Christchurch, in general I am not attracted to sunsetting clauses in the way he suggests. One area where a greater degree of post-legislative scrutiny is needed is regulatory impact assessments. I have no idea whether we are within the scope of the new clause, Sir Nicholas, but one of the things about regulatory impact assessment is that an assessment is made when a proposal is brought forward by Government identifying costs, benefits and likely impacts. My sense is that there is not often enough a retrospective analysis of whether those impact assessments were accurate, whether the expected benefits were delivered, the expected costs were accurately assessed and the predictions in the proposal, which partly in a sense justified the proposal, were accurate. There is in a general sense a great case to be made for much stronger and more consistent retrospective assessment of whether impact assessments were effective predictors of likely outcomes. We are trying to move to that across Government. The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire spoke about a sunset clause being a necessary protection. I do not feel that that is the case. In addition to the points that I made about changing the culture across Whitehall, the Government assert that the preconditions within 3(2) and, without wishing to rehash the debate about necessary protections and continuing to exercise any right or freedoms, the need for statutory public consultation with those who would be affected— The Chairman: Order. May I remind the Minister that we are dealing with clause 31, which is about the commencement date, and new clause 6 which relates to a sunset clause? He is going a little wide and unnecessarily so. Perhaps he can direct his remarks to clause 31 and new clause 6? 2.45 pmMr. Murphy: Of course I will obey your strictures, Sir Nicholas. The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire said that a sunset clause was a necessary safeguard. I am making the point that there are other safeguards and protections in the Bill and in our procedure. Not least among them is that under the 2001 Act there is a ministerial undertaking not to press ahead with proposals that the relevant Select Committees oppose. The additional protection that we have conceded in Committee is that we will have conversations with Conservative and Liberal Democrat Front Benchers—I think that it will be the week after next—about the specific shape of the principle of a veto. That is a substantial and significant additional protection that we are now committed to putting into the Bill as a consequence of points raised by hon. Members, particularly those opposite, and by
Question put and agreed to. Clause 31 ordered to stand part of the Bill. The Chairman: I feel that I should give notice to the Committee that the Opposition have indicated that they may wish to press new clause 6 to a Division, in which case I shall put the question only after we have disposed of new clause 2, which is also for Division only. Clause 32 Extent Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill. Mr. Heath: Will the Minister explain what legislation he has in mind that extends outside England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland? Are we dealing with the British overseas territories or is there another interpretation? [Interruption.] As my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge says, wider still and wider. Mr. Murphy: Of course the Government do not intend to legislate beyond their territorial integrity. If that is the hon. Gentleman’s reading of clause 32, we will seek to clarify the point before Report. Mr. Heath: He does not know, does he? No. Question put and agreed to. Clause 32 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 33 Short title Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill. David Howarth: We have reached the end of the Bill and the clause that describes its short title. Is the Minister still satisfied with the short title that is being offered in clause 33? Throughout the debate he has referred so many times to the Hampton review that he might perhaps be prepared to offer the Hampton review Bill in place of the present name. He has also referred so many times to firefighters’ pensions that perhaps that ought to form the title. The Bill has a popular alternative short title, which I think should be attributed to Professor John Spencer; the abolition of Parliament Bill. The Chairman: I am tempted to allow the hon. Gentleman to continue, but what he has said so far does not encourage me to do so. If anything had happened in Committee to lead us to believe that the short title needed to be changed, there would have had to be a substantial change to the Bill. I therefore do not believe that there are any grounds for suggesting that
David Howarth: My point was almost the opposite of yours, Sir Nicholas. Since there had been no change to the Bill, I wondered whether the Minister would consider changing the title to the abolition of Parliament Bill, since that is still possible under the Bill. The Chairman: The Minister has no comment to make. I therefore put the question. Question put and agreed to. Clause 33 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Schedule agreed to. New Clause 17 Combination of powers
Column Number: 294
Brought up, and read the First time. |
| |
| ©Parliamentary copyright 2006 | Prepared 10 March 2006 |