Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

This has been a very interesting debate and the value and weight of the contributions, from all parts of the House, has been significant. I hope that, as a result, the Minister has had a taste of where Members are coming from on this Bill. The ability to deliver more regulatory reforms quickly and efficiently should be good news for business. Given that more than 3,800 new regulations are created every year, British business needs some good news. According to the Cabinet Office, since 2001 27 regulatory reform orders have been made. As my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) said, this does not seem a particularly large number of RROs given their impact, nor given the thousands of regulations that have been created since then. Indeed, the Government anticipated that 60 RROs would be made when the original Bill was going through Parliament in 2001. The Conservative party has argued consistently and strenuously for serious deregulatory policies, and we agree with the concerns expressed by the director general of the CBI, who said that British business had a £30-billion millstone around its neck. The burden of regulation was a subject expanded on strongly by my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) and for Harwich (Mr. Carswell). The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), and even some Labour Back-Benchers, such as the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor), also recognised the size of the problem. Productivity underpins strong economic performance and sustained increases in living standards. According to the Federation of Small Businesses, the people who run small businesses are forced to spend 200 per cent. longer on managing regulation—or up to 10 hours extra a week—under Labour. We over-regulate at our peril. The hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) took that further, and said that too much legislation can, by itself, lead to bad law and weak scrutiny of law.