Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

I want to make some progress, if I may. My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) said that the inertia in the process since 2001 was not necessarily the fault of the Select Committees or of the degree of parliamentary scrutiny. He has a strong point; we have to look at the system in the round. There is an argument that Departments will be more reluctant to come forward with regulatory reform orders if they think that the process is so cumbersome that it will be difficult to use. So there is an argument about incentives and how the process works as a whole. But the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, who has been a voice of common sense throughout this process, and who has come up with positive and constructive proposals, made a strong point about there being not just a duty on this House to agree the proper scrutiny procedure, but a duty on Departments to pursue this agenda with vigour and enthusiasm.