Work and Families Bill

I rise to support my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) and other hon. Members who support new clause 1. I am non-executive director of three companies cited in the register, but I am, of course, not speaking on their behalf or at their request. The Minister should ask himself two important questions before he asks the House to reject the new clause. The first question has partially emerged in the debate: what has become of the Prime Minister’s policy, which is very good, that a regulation should be struck off for every new one that is imposed? No equal and opposite regulation is being struck off to balance today’s sizeable one. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) asked my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest which regulation we would strike off. If he had been present in the House just before Christmas, he would have witnessed my leading for the Opposition from the Front Bench and setting out a wide-ranging deregulatory policy, which includes 63 specific ideas for the Government, and we have sent those ideas to different branches of the Government in the hope that some of them will be incorporated. Indeed, a Minister suggested the beginnings of one such idea in an overnight briefing to the papers, and perhaps the House will have the courtesy of being told whether it is true—it would be nice to feel that as a Member of Parliament, one is sometimes the first to hear such things rather than the last. We have identified plenty of regulations that could be struck off to add to the good workings of the British economy and reduce the burden on people and businesses, but they fall outside the scope of the debate on new clause 1. One sometimes wonders whether Ministers belong to the same Government as the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has made some extremely good speeches, such as his speech on deregulation, but the opposite of what he has said is happening day by day. As has been said, this provision is a good example of something happening in exactly the opposite direction from that set out by the Prime Minister and without the action to balance the situation enjoined by him. My hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest has made it clear that she supports the proposal, but on the condition that offsetting deregulation, which has not been introduced, takes place. The second question about which the Minister should think more carefully concerns cost. It is unsatisfactory that we should debate such an important measure with no credible figures from the Government, and I find it unbelievable that we are discussing a cost of only £400,000. If we examine the Government’s assessment of the impact of the legislation, the gross figure for the regulatory impact of the legislation is cited as £575 million a year, if one adds up the highest estimates. The Government say that there could be offsets of £209 million a year against that figure—£196 million of those offsets are extremely optimistic, but let us give them to the Government. In short, according to the Government’s own regulatory impact assessment, we are discussing about £400 million of extra cost. We are being asked to believe that the important part of the cost imposed on small businesses will amount to some £400,000, so it is not worth exempting small business—although it will cost the Government a mind-blowing £39 million to deal with the problem, it will save small businesses only £400,000. I know that anything that this Government run is considerably less well run than it would be in the private sector—productivity is a far bigger problem in the public sector than the private sector—but it is difficult to believe that they are so monumentally incompetent that they would spend £39 million to save £400,000 a year. I put it to the Minister that the truth of the position is that a bigger element of the £575 million that the Government have identified will be attributable to small business, and that it would therefore be a useful saving for small businesses in implementing the measure to transfer the work burden from them to the Treasury in cases in which small businesses would like that to happen. I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest and other hon. Friends have in mind an opt-in system, which means that if by any chance the Government are right and there are no real costs to the measure for small businesses, those small businesses would be happy to administer the measure themselves and the Treasury would not be troubled. However, I suspect that the measure will involve substantial cost. It would be a very good idea for small businesses for the Treasury to do the work, if we discover that the cost estimates are far from adequate. It is fundamental that a Government who claim to believe in deregulation should set out accurate and detailed costings that have weight and carry credibility both with this House and with those outside who are interested in such matters. This is yet another example in which the regulatory impact assessment is on the whole vague and incredible. Where the regulatory impact assessment is specific, it comes up with some very large numbers, which the Government have passed by and cannot explain. We should not ignore the £390 million cost which the regulatory impact assessment states that the Government must pay, which means that the total cost of the measure taking the Government cost and the net private sector cost in the RIA will be around £800 million. The Government must remember that they have no money of their own. They have only the money that they collect from us as individuals and from the business community, so the £390 million of so-called Government cost is also a cost on business and individuals who work for those businesses, just as much as the £400 million cost is a direct charge on the private sector. I urge the Minister to think again. If he will not, and if he remains inclined to tell hon. Members that he does not want new clause 1, will he please explain when we will have proper figures for the costs and a proper off-set under the terms of the Prime Minister’s policy?