Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

We would expect delivery of the administrative burdens project. We have contacted and interviewed more than 200,000 businesses and voluntary organisations to determine how we can reduce their administrative burden. We would expect to have bolstered UK competitiveness and to have implemented simplification plans from all 21 Departments. That is how the Bill should be judged in the long term, if it receives a fair wind in this and the other place and is delivered to the statute book. An additional protection when laying a draft order is that the Minister must submit an explanatory memorandum and the Regulatory Reform Committee and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in the other place will make a case-by-case analysis of every proposed order. I give the House clear undertakings, which I shall repeat in Committee, that the orders will not be used to implement highly controversial reforms. They will not be forced through in the face of opposition from the Committees, and the views of the Committees on what is appropriate for delivery by order will be final. Under the super-affirmative procedure, which, as I have said, Parliament has a right to require, the Committees will be able to recommend amendments to orders and the Minister will be able to lay a revised draft order reflecting those recommendations.