Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

I was a little disappointed by the Minister’s comments on new clause 2. As I said, although I do not propose to support it, because its terms are too prescriptive, there is considerable merit in the recommendation by the Select Committee on Regulatory Reform for regular parliamentary scrutiny of what the Bill achieves. I have two major reasons for thinking that. They are based on experience. First, I served on the Select Committee for about two to two and half years, although it felt a great deal longer. One of the things that would have made our work much more effective was greater transparency with regard to the lack of political will in Departments to achieve the objectives set out in legislation. There is no doubt that one way to gain the attention of politicians and civil servants is to have transparency and a regular report to Parliament that allows us, the media and the public to know what is going on. That is important because deregulation has become a much higher political priority for everyone. We are constantly chided by the Opposition for our failures in deregulation, and we continually make commitments to do better. Looking back at the historical record, it is clear that previous Governments have not done that well, either; we all remember the ““bonfire of the regulations”” in the early 1990s. It behoves all of us in Parliament to create the conditions whereby we can succeed. The Bill does many things, but it does not achieve proper parliamentary scrutiny—I am talking about scrutiny in this Chamber—of what is being achieved. The second consideration, as I said in an intervention, is the culture of Whitehall. It is undoubtedly the case that the priority both for politicians and for civil servants is creating new regulations and new laws. One becomes a Cabinet Minister by passing laws; one becomes a permanent secretary by assisting Ministers in passing laws. We need to try to create incentives to do away with laws as well as to create them. This measure is a small mechanism, but it is probably the only way in which we can change the culture of Whitehall and create a better opportunity to do away with regulation.