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- “I suggest that it
needs the input of industry, commerce, small firms and large companies.
They are better placed to assess the priorities of deregulation than
are government departments”.—[Official Report,
13/6/06; col. 140.]
The people who need to know what is being done are those who are enduring the burdens of over-regulation. As the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, and others have said, we are all in favour of dealing with this mass of over-regulation with which we seem somehow to have saddled ourselves. We will need to know what has been achieved— which, I think, is at the heart of my noble friend’s amendment—and, as the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, said, what has not been achieved.
I hope we shall return to the very interesting response that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, gave to an amendment brought forward by my noble friend Lady Wilcox on the first day in Committee. He said that perhaps we should have some sort of procedure by which those who are subject to burdens can initiate a process to make sure they are properly considered. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, is nodding that that is what he implied. I thought that was one of the most hopeful things to come out of last Monday’s debates and I hope we shall hear more about it. But it will need both sides. We may not have achieved very much and very much more still remains to be achieved. It seems to me that our old friends, openness and transparency, require the Government to accept the amendment.
Lord
Berkeley: Noble Lords who have spoken to the
amendment have been talking up the benefits of removing burdens from
big business, small business and many other people, and a report to
Parliament, on the face of it, sounds a very good idea. However, the
problem with removing burdens from business is that, again, some people
may suffer. If we are going to start saying what a great job we have
done in
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Lord Stoddart of Swindon: I hope the same because not all regulation is bad. However, this Bill is about deregulation and, as such, we ought to make sure that it comes into operation properly and that Parliament is informed of what is happening. That is why I support the amendment.
There are two other reasons why I support it. First, the amendment, if accepted, would impose a discipline on Ministers and their departments thoroughly to examine whether or not regulations are necessary, and then to bring forward to Parliament proposals for deregulation. Parliament will then, presumably, be able to debate the proposals to see whether they comply with what it wants. So, it is a good disciplinary amendment.
Secondly, we are often told when we ask questions that this information is not kept centrally. Of course, in order to see how deregulation is proceeding, it will be necessary for us to know what the position is overall and not department by department. The amendment would require the Government and departments to have centrally held information to enable Parliament to debate deregulation realistically. I therefore hope the Minister will accept the amendment.
4.15 pm
Lord Bassam of Brighton: This is an amendment with which I am familiar, in the sense that noble Lords opposite frequently table a reporting amendment to Bills to ensure that the standard and threshold of holding the Government to account are raised. I have some sympathy with that intent; reporting should certainly be part of the process. Yet admirable though this amendment is, ultimately I cannot support it. However, I can certainly support its spirit and advise your Lordships that we have already given a very clear commitment to having a review process. My honourable friend Mr McFadden gave that commitment in another place during a debate on a similar amendment.
We certainly support the idea that we should constantly look at how well the reforms are working. It was in part the review of the 2001 Act which persuaded us that we needed a rather more dramatic piece of legislation that would be more effective. So, if you like, a review of the legislative framework has already had an impact. It has meant that we have tried to design better procedures for the process of deregulating.
We also believe that all departments should keep their legislation under review. That is why the Government set up the Panel on Regulatory Accountability—the PRA— chaired by the Prime Minister, and why there are regulatory reform Ministers in each of the main regulatory departments. That is also why there is a Better Regulation Commission, keeping an eye on them all.
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Departments are currently reviewing their regulations and drafting simplification plans, which include measures to reduce administrative burdens on business and the public and voluntary sectors. These will be published by the time of the PBR, later this year. The Better Regulation Commission will provide independent advice to government from business and other external stakeholders about new regulatory proposals and the Government's overall regulatory performance. It will continue the challenge role carried out by the Better Regulation Task Force.
It is perhaps worth saying that since 1 January this year, the commission has taken on a new responsibility to review the simplification plans that government departments and some independent regulators are preparing. The commission sits on the PRA committee reviewing the plans; and its opinion of a department’s plan will be made public at the time of the plan’s publication.
Departments will be required to revise these plans annually; as part of that, they will include details of simplifications delivered, including orders made the previous year. All departments are also obliged to report on their better regulation work as part of their annual reports, as they have done for the past two years. That picks up something referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, with regard to a wider review to look at areas where the deregulatory genie has not yet reached. Members of your Lordships' House will be aware that while debating a similar amendment in another place, we gave very clear commitments.
In addition to departmental reports, we would expect departmental Select Committees to report on the annual reports I referred to, as appropriate. The Commons Regulatory Reform Committee, with its new expanded remit, will also take interest in these reports and departmental simplifications plans.
Although I agree that we should be open to reviewing orders, it would be unnecessarily prescriptive to write that into the Bill. I am sure that Members of your Lordships' House share my view and that of Members in another place that there must be a cultural shift within Whitehall as a whole to deliver the real benefits on the ground to those who are being regulated. While we debate the Bill here, it may seem as though we are debating something in isolation, but Members of your Lordships' House may not see in the same way the work being carried out throughout the departments. There is a much greater desire to move the deregulatory agenda on and the Bill is a reflection of that not an absolute in itself.
The amendment would impose an annual reporting cycle on the Government, which would be an unnecessary burden and may well deflect attention from the important work done by the task force, the commission and the various committees that look at regulations. It would be contrary to the spirit and the purpose of the Bill. Although I understand and sympathise with the desire to have annual reports, in the end it would be counter productive.
The
noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, referred to comments that I made in earlier
debates, possibly when I was summarising the portal that we have set up
to encourage
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Baroness Carnegy of Lour: The Minister talks about producing this report as a burden. He has given us a great description of the many excellent internal arrangements that will try to get more and better deregulation. But for goodness sake, you cannot describe as a burden the Government’s duty, having legislated for a Bill about which Parliament has many doubts, to tell Parliament how it is working. It will not be difficult at all because they will know the answer to all those questions. The only one that might present slight difficulties is the question of how much impact there has been in a short space of time, but I suspect that the people to whom the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, referred—those who are disadvantaged by any measure—will soon talk about the impact. They will not wait a year to do it. It is extraordinary in this case, where we have a Bill that Parliament is doubtful, about to say that the Government think that the report would be a burden.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: In all these things, I would argue that we have to be proportionate. The amendment calls for an annual report and other amendments would place reporting obligations on the Government. An annual report is disproportionate in terms of its likely impact on the deregulatory process. It may hamper some of the deregulatory work.
Pat McFadden gave an undertaking to report on the working of the Act within five years of it coming into effect. That is a sensible approach, because it will enable the Government to reflect on where there are strengths and weaknesses in how the legislation works, consider the legislation’s effectiveness, pick up on all the detailed work that I described earlier in responding to the amendment and enable us to publicise and promote the progress that has already been made. It is for that practical reason, and a desire to let civil servants and officials get on with the job, that encourages me to think that the amendment is excessive in its impact.
Perhaps I should also
put on record that the simplification plans that I referred to will be
published annually and publicly, and I am more than
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Baroness Wilcox: I am impressed and delighted by the number of people who have taken part in this debate. I was happy to hear the warm words of the Minister, and I thought that we were getting somewhere; but now I feel that we are not. We are back in the debate that we had on the 2001 Bill, saying all these warm things.
The Minister says that he wants this to be dramatic and effective—but “dramatic and effective” means the transparency of a formal reporting system. I pick up on the point made so well by the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, whom I am delighted to see taking part in debates on these amendments. I hope that he will stay with us throughout all this, because the points that he makes are certainly being picked up elsewhere. But if the Bill requires every Minister from every department and his senior officials have to report to Parliament, it will be self-evident when they have failed to pick up something or have done nothing. It will all be there for us to see.
At this stage, I shall not press the amendment, but I hope that the Minister will look at the matter again and see how much support there has been for such an amendment right across the House. That does not necessarily mean that my wording is perfect and it is the Minister’s Bill and his right to come back with whatever wording he likes. But unless we start hardening up and putting things on the face of this Bill, we are merely using warm words and wasting our time. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Waddington moved Amendment No. 30:
- (1) An
order made under Part 1 containing provision relating to Community
Treaties, Community instruments or Community obligations shall,
notwithstanding the European Communities Act 1972 (c. 68), be binding
in any legal proceedings in the United Kingdom.
The noble Lord said: I had an opportunity of trailing this new clause the other day, so I shall try not to dwell too long on what I said then.
Most of
the regulatory burden on business has its origin in Europe, and many
may think that a deregulatory initiative that does not recognise that
fact is little more than window dressing. The Government said that
better and less regulation was a priority of the EU, but the figures
that they cite in support of that proposition show nothing of the sort.
At Second Reading, the
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The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, seems reluctant to admit that to the best of my knowledge not one single measure introduced by the Commission over the years has ever been repealed. That is hardly surprising. If you have a system under which only the Commission can introduce legislation, it is only the Commission that can introduce repealing legislation, and it is not in its nature to do so.
4.30 pm
Where does that leave us? Have we just to accept that a burden placed on business is irremovable, and there is nothing to be done about it if that burden has been placed as a result of a decision in Europe? I suggest that if Parliament so wills, there is something we can do about it, and this new clause points the way. If the new clause is accepted, three things will happen. First, it will be plainly stated in legislation—for the first time, I think —that the 1972 Act, although of great importance, is no different from any other Act of Parliament. With the European Communities Act 1972, there was, in the words of noble and learned Lord, Lord Bridge of Harwich, in the Factortame case, a voluntary surrender of sovereignty. What has been given, however, can be taken away. The Act can be repealed by any other Act, and other legislation can disapply it in specified cases. It is no bad thing for Parliament to assert that fact. If it does not, the time may come when the courts say, “It’s too late to assert that the 1972 Act is like any other Act; too late to ask the courts to affirm a law which contradicts a treaty obligation, even if Parliament states in plain and unambiguous terms that that is the law’s intent”.
I must emphasise that the new clause is not an invitation to the Government to break our EU treaty obligations. It is a reminder that Parliament is sovereign and can, by appropriate legislation, override earlier legislation, none of which is entrenched, and can certainly, if it so wishes, use machinery such as is provided in the Bill to make laws relating to Community obligations. The clause does not attack the 1972 Act, but merely states that, notwithstanding what is contained in the 1972 Act, a Minister may make an order removing or reducing a burden of the type referred to in Clause 1, and we can ensure by the use of clear and unambiguous words that the order is binding in any legal proceedings in the United Kingdom. The new clause is a timely reminder of Parliament’s rights—an assertion of Parliament’s sovereignty.
Secondly, I want to be
sure that a Minister is able to make a legally binding and effective
deregulation order where the original order was made in purported
compliance with the 1972 Act, but in fact went further than was
necessary to meet our EU obligations. Surely the Bill should make it
clear that a new order could be brought into force doing no more than
is strictly
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I can give two examples where the new clause might be helpful. One example of how the power might be used is in relation to the droit de suite directive, which gives artists the right to a cut when their works are resold. Although the Government opposed the directive, and it was imposed on us only by majority voting, the Minister did not take what many might have thought was the obvious course of implementing the directive to the letter, but proceeded to enlarge its scope dramatically by applying it to transactions of far less value than those covered by the agreed scheme. This provision could be used to take the regulations back to what is strictly required.
Another example was highlighted by a case in the Court of Appeal the other day. Under the EU regulations, boats less than 10 metres in length do not have to keep records of their fish catches. In Britain there is no such exemption for small boats. In that way Defra makes the common fisheries policy even more onerous than is necessary for many of our fishermen, and ensures, incidentally, not that fish stocks are preserved but that the fish are caught not by British fishermen but by those of other nations.
This new clause is an assertion of sovereignty and would meet the need to ensure that the Bill’s machinery can be used in respect of orders made under the 1972 Act, in particular when an order has gone further than is necessary to meet the Community obligation. Finally, the new clause would enable the Government in an exceptional case, and after appropriate negotiations, to say to our partners in Europe and/or the Commission, that we insist on deregulating on our own terms and propose to make such deregulatory law binding on the judiciary in this country, notwithstanding the 1972 Act. I submit that that is a common-sense approach. It lacks common sense and it is an insult to Parliament to say that what is done in Europe, however absurd it may be, is inevitable and that in no circumstances can Parliament touch it. With that I could never agree. I beg to move.
Lord Willoughby de Broke: I have added my name to the amendment standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, because it fills an extraordinary gap in the Bill. I understand and approve of the value of the Bill to deregulate and to reduce red tape. As the Minister said at Second Reading, the Bill will,
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- “it is of
crucial importance for the continued competitiveness of this country
that any Government pursue as many measures as possible to ensure that
regulation is kept to an absolute minimum so that businesses ...
can concentrate their efforts where they add most
value”.—[Official Report, 13/06/06; col.
121.]
The Minister went on to trumpet the fact that the UK was rated the second most competitive economy in the EU, which is rather like boasting that you are the second most successful penalty taker in the English football team—it really is not terribly relevant. We are competing not just in the EU but globally, and our global competitiveness is being eroded by the torrent of EU legislation that is brought forward without, as my noble friend Lord Waddington said, our apparently being able to change a single syllable of it, even where we disagree with it. It is important that the amendment is considered seriously in the light of the fact that between 50 per cent and 75 per cent—estimates vary—of our business legislation is imported from the EU. I believe that the Government said that the figure was 50 per cent in an Answer to my noble friendLord Pearson, while the German Government have said that 80 per cent of their laws and burdens on business come from the EU.
The think tank Open Europe has produced a study which found that EU legislation has been responsible for 77 per cent of the costs of regulations on UK businesses since 1998, at a cost of £30 billion to the UK economy. But none of those regulations, as my noble friend Lord Waddington pointed out, can apparently be touched by Parliament. Neither the other place nor this place can change a single syllable of any EU regulation. It simply has to be rubber-stamped and I do not believe that that is at all helpful when it comes to lessening the burden of deregulation, as this Bill is purported to do.
Perhaps I
could give a few examples from the coalface of the cost and burden of
these regulations. I am a farmer and just a few of the regulations that
I have to face are as follows. I begin with the 18 cross-compliance
directives which govern our payments through the rural Payments Agency
from the European Union. We have the fallen stock directive, which is
an expensive scheme to stop us disposing of fallen stock on our own
farms. “Fallen stock” does not refer to the FTSE index
but to animals that die on farms. We have the horse passports
directive, which is totally unnecessary and completely unacceptable. It
is just to prevent food from those who eat horse flesh on the Continent
being affected by exports from this country. We have the waste disposal
directive, which is adding costs by the day to agriculture; the work at
height directive, also known as the “how many men does it take
to change a light bulb?” directive; the temperature at work
directive; the veterinary medicines directive; and the waste of water
framework directive, which I am struggling with at the moment. For some
obscure reason it requires all farmers and rural businesses to put
non-return valves on every single tap on their farm and to make sure
that they cannot be used to hose anything down. The reason for this,
apparently, is that there may be some danger, however remote, of
contaminating the mains water supply. I wrote to our enforcing agency
through
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If this Bill is to be effective, it has to deal with EU legislation, as well as home-cooked legislation. Therefore, I hope that the Committee will listen very carefully and take on board the import of this amendment.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: I too have signed this amendment, so shall speak to it. I remind the Committee of the 1972 Act and the debates which we had in Parliament at that time. As I was a Member of the House of Commons and took part in those debates, I have a memory of what was said about the impact that the 1972 Act would have on British life. We were assured when we were giving away the right to make our own rules that we had the veto. There was the “empty chair” situation, whereby nothing really mattered because if things affected us adversely, we could veto them. But times have changed. Gradually, over a period of time, ratchet by ratchet, treaty by treaty, the veto has been virtually taken away. Now, it almost no longer exists and everything is done by qualified majority. When regulations and directives are made, the United Kingdom has an influence on those decisions of only about 8.5 per cent. One could say that 55 per cent or 60 per cent, or whatever, of our laws are not being made here in Westminster, but that they are being made in Brussels by 24 countries, including ourselves, on the basis of qualified majority voting, and that decisions that are inimical to our own interests may very well be made.
The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, attempts to deal with this and I hope that it would deal with the matter if it were accepted. It makes the assertion that British sovereignty remains completely intact, given that all appearances suggest that it does not. In Committee on 3 July the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, stated:
- “We want open
markets—that is what the single European market is
about”.—[Official Report, 3/7/06; col.
44.]
In
addition, because we are part of the EC and the European single market,
we are not allowed to decide what our trading policy should be. The
results of that have been seen just recently, when the European Union
placed tariffs on shoes coming from China and Vietnam. Perhaps people
think that that does not matter, but it does. It will certainly matter
to people with children, because we now find that the imposition of
those
10 July 2006 : Column 502
The other point I wish to make is that we are not really in a European Union market that believes in free trade, which, I thought that Her Majesty's Government, the Opposition and everyone else believed in. In fact, the single market is a closed market and access to it is only by agreement and is not open in the true sense of the word. So, again I say that the amendment is important.
Once a regulation has been made, as noble Lords will know, it is incumbent on this country to put it into operation, whether it is gold-plated or not. Once a regulation is made by the Council of Ministers and once qualified majority voting is applied, it is incumbent on this country to put it into operation and there is nothing we can do to alter it.
What are the consequences of that? I have been questioning the Government about a recent consequence which arises from the hazardous waste directive. The directive affects the use of lead and some other metals in electrical and electronic goods, and it will affect industries in this country to a large degree. It will put up their costs and, indeed, will put some companies out of business. I have tabled Questions to the Government about this, to which the Answer has been, “Well, we can't do anything about it, and it's in the best interests of the single market that we can't.” So, once a regulation is made, it does not matter how much it costs industry in this country, it has to be imposed and there is nothing that our Government can do about it. The cost of the directive throughout Europe will be about £44 billion, yet it is imposed on individual countries and there is nothing that they can do to protect their industries from possible bankruptcy. One could give all sorts of examples of the way in which the regulation operates in the European Union.
At Question Time today, the Lord Chancellor accused me of being anti-European. That simply is not true. I am not anti-European: I am simply anti-European Union and anti the impositions that it makes on our sovereignty and on our industry and national life. It affects not only our trade but virtually everything, and we are not the only ones involved. The other day, the Bavarian environment Minister, Werner Schnappauf, talking about European over-regulation, said that in the 1990s the German regions had to comply with 90 regulations a year but that now the figure is closer to 500 a year. If that is happening in Germany, it must also be happening in this country. Thus, there has been a five-and-a-half-fold increase in the number of regulations since the 1990s, and that is an enormous burden on our industry and on the country generally.
I have spoken for long enough—I am sure that some people think that I have spoken for too long—but I feel very strongly about the way that we are governed by regulations from the EU, which, in the context of the United Kingdom, have no real relevance. I believe that, by agreeing to the amendment, something could be done to mitigate the baleful effects which I fear come from our membership of the European Union and the way that it is operated.
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