Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

My Lords, reducing the regulatory burden has been the declared objective of Governments past and present for many years, but despite those good intentions—reiterated by the Minister today—year after year, we have witnessed the opposite, an ever-increasing burden. Whether it be from Brussels or Whitehall, the number of regulations increases. Regulations imposed over the past 10 years are said to have cost business more than £50 billion. That is the background we should have in mind when hearing the welcome news about the savings to which the Minister referred in his speech. How often are regulations cut, amended, simplified or brought up to date to reflect changing needs or to make them less bureaucratic and perhaps more effective? To state the obvious, we live in fast-changing times. Many of the regulations established, say, 20 years ago may well be inappropriate or obsolete today. They may need to be cut or amended to be effective. In other words, in one way or another, a great number must be out of date, and indeed some must be unnecessary. Successive Governments have failed to give regulations sunset clauses, giving them a limited life that would require them to be reviewed and reconsidered after a stated period. That is what I believe is needed and would better serve the interests of those whom regulations are designed to protect, be they consumers, employees or ordinary citizens. The Bill before us has some worthy objectives. They are based on Philip Hampton’s report, a very good report given that his brief was concerned only with regulatory inspections and regulatory enforcement. However, I suggest that what is needed is not only more sensible, more proportionate and—as Hampton advocates—more risk-based enforcement, but a far more risk-based, effective, smaller, up to date regulatory regime. There is, inevitably of course, a vested interest in most regulatory bodies to have more and not fewer regulations to enforce. Their jobs are then bigger and the rewards greater. There is also in the world of Whitehall a reluctance to take on the task of reducing, modernising, amending or cutting unnecessary regulation. There are not many rewards for doing that, as I personally found when in 1993 I was advising the Government on deregulation. Far more attractive and popular with Ministers, it seems, is to devise or gold-plate a new regulation. So, I have to say that this Bill is a missed opportunity, concerned only with enforcement. The Minister proposing it has extensive experience on how the commercial and industrial world is over-regulated. He surely knows better than most how fast the business world is changing, and therefore how great the need is to keep the regulatory regime up to date so that it can be effective in the protection it offers while minimising the burden that puts up costs and reduces our country’s competitiveness. Is it not possible for the Bill to be amended so as to give the Local Better Regulation Office an added duty to recommend to Government the reform of regulation that it believes would be in the public interest, leading to fewer regulations without loss of the needed protection of the public? Sometimes that would involve the amendment, simplification or removal of regulations that were no longer needed for public protection. It is, I admit, better to have bad unnecessary regulations not enforced—or what is now called ““a light touch””, as is intended in the Bill—than to have their unnecessary inspection and enforcement. But surely much better than that is to have the regulations themselves removed or amended. I suggest that the local better regulation offices will be well placed to be agents of reform, making a contribution to easing the burden of regulation by recommending to the Government and Parliament changes or the removal of regulations—and the Minister is very well placed to judge the value of such reform.