Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2007

I will do my best to answer the questions that have been asked. I am sorry; the answers have been put in reverse order. Single sites can have a single regulator, although it depends on the circumstances. I leaned back and asked my officials whether this included farms, because there is nothing more I would like to say to farmers than that they could have a single regulator. They may have; as I said, it will depend on the circumstances. We must differentiate in some ways. Farms are small but sometimes complicated businesses, and we seek to reduce the form filling, although I would not want to overplay this for agriculture. Under the regulations, the greatest savings in this area will be for small and medium-sized businesses, probably with multi-sites and one licence to cover them. There will be many more savings, but probably fewer for single sites. The noble Earl is absolutely correct that the whole idea is to simplify the situation and get down to having less regulation and less form filling on farms. We are abandoning 40 different pieces of legislation with more than 500 pages, wrapping them up in these new regulations, with their 120-odd pages, without losing sight of any environmental protection issues. It is important to put that on the record. As I said, single sites can have a single regulator, depending on the circumstances. The Environment Agency is putting into place a system that will allow it to deliver the new regulations—without an IT system, I have to say—if there is a delay; so the benefits to customers will still be there. The noble Earl is quite right that the track record of the new implementation of IT in Whitehall is frankly appalling. It is worse now, and I feel bad about that. Before I became a Minister, I had two years at the Public Accounts Committee and we had several IT disasters between 1989 and 1991. When I became a Minister in 1997, I took three or four reports from the NAO to MAFF. I asked, ““When are we going to start the cattle movement system?””, which was not blue sky but IT-based. I said, ““Here are some disaster reports, which we should avoid””. In some ways we did. Nevertheless, our record is not good. I shall not comment on discs. I saw only the Chancellor’s Statement. Because of the Climate Change Bill I had to turn the television off. I wanted to send the officials away because I wanted to watch the rest of it, but I shall have to do that later. On the fifth consultation there were 44 responses. As Members of the Committee will see on page 9 of the RIA proposals, each consultation was specific, so one would expect the numbers to vary. There are three types of permits; namely, the exemption permits with the lowest risk, the standard permits that are low risk and the bespoke permits with the highest risk. It seems to be a real risk-based regulation. One-size-fits-all regulations would have everyone wrapped up in red tape. People will want to be double-sure, will watch their back and will close every gap. That is not risk-based, it is being ridiculous. That would be over-regulation and double regulation, of which we already have too much. So I am very pleased to bring these regulations forward on behalf of my ministerial colleagues, and the industry has welcomed the changes. I freely admit that, in the scale of government money, to claim that we are saving £76 million over 10 years is chicken feed: it is £7 million a year. It is like the third decimal point in any department’s adding up, and it can be lost. However, we have to make this a reality. I was very pleased to learn from the officials that we have put in a checking system. It is important to show those who have encouraged us to deregulate that these are genuine savings. The £55 million is reckoned to be the administrative burden reduction and the £21 million reduction is from wider benefits, which is how the £76 million is calculated. The savings to industry are estimated at £35 million. It is very difficult to put calculations on this, because we are estimating the number of forms that will have to be completed. A time is put on filling in the form and rough costs are calculated. As far as I know, there has been no industry backlash on this. By and large, the industry is very supportive of the regulations, and I am sure that it will want to make them work. I have good news and bad news for the noble Earl on appeals. I must not be rude, but the bad news is that the length of appeal depends on the subject matter. The good news is that the Planning Inspectorate will deal with it. I know that the Planning Inspectorate can come under severe criticism, but it is not its own fault for the load it carries in operating the planning process. From a technical, an administrative and a government point of view, the Planning Inspectorate is a first-class body of people, so we can be satisfied that the planning process will be in good hands. The amount of time taken depends on the burden, the workload and the subject matter. I was asked about the removal of the ““due diligence”” defence. The existence of strict liability in environmental regulations is the result of a deliberate choice made by successive Administrations to secure higher environmental standards in those areas than would otherwise be the case. That is probably the short answer with a bit of gold plating. The due diligence defence can enable industry to avoid responsibility for the consequences of the actions that they have chosen to conduct. That is because operators need to do only what they think is reasonable to prevent those consequences, rather than what was objectively possible, even though on occasions severe damage can be caused to the environment or human health. So there are these issues where one takes a different look at the situation. The Environment Agency wants to use the regulations to drive its risk-based approach to regulation. It is an opportunity to use resources more wisely. Hopefully we will get more value for the money we spend. It would be nice if we spent less money. In other words, the Environment Agency staff would be more occupied on the job rather than chasing up individual forms that have been filled in. The agency also gives important advice to industry in its widest sense as well as farmers. It is much better that staff are doing that than chasing up forms, so it is very important to cut their number. On the next steps, we will be publishing Defra’s annual simplification plan before Christmas. It has been signed off as far as I am aware and has gone around. We are on course to deliver our annual report to Parliament on simplifying regulations. These regulations will be covered by it. We are now looking at the EPP2, perhaps water discharge consents, radioactive substance regulation and a host of other changes. We expect and hope to be consulting shortly, which is shorthand for as soon as resources permit and we have something to consult on. The process of trying to cut down regulation and the number of forms people have to fill in is ongoing in the department. It is a genuine effort by Defra to cut the red tape burden, and that is wholly to be commended. On Question, Motion agreed to.