Legislative Reform (Limited Partnerships) Order 2009

I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, for putting this change in regulation into the wider context. The points that he made are vital, and I am grateful for his welcome of the commitment by Companies House to move smartly to implement the change. I say to him directly that it should not have taken five years. That is far too long. We should do better and we need to do better in the future. The noble Lord made a point about business reaching a tipping point. With regard to the over-regulatory burden, we are listening very carefully to what business is saying to us at the moment. The global financial downturn was a crisis that very nearly engulfed our financial services industry, and the call for stronger regulation which came out of that was, I think, valid. However, in recognising the need for more regulation in that area, there is a danger that we will fail to recognise the equal importance of putting the same effort into simplifying and reducing the regulatory burden on business. I accept his point that the regulatory burden is significant. Following the decision not to implement a regulatory budget, we are monitoring the numbers of new regulatory instruments and are collating them into an overall single picture, which we are now reviewing. It would be useful for us to be in a position to share the outcome of that in the near future. The committee’s reports on progress are indeed the mechanism for oversight, and I can tell the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, as a member of that committee that this issue was reviewed just a few days ago. It is at the front and centre of the Government’s mind, and we take it very seriously. While making the necessary regulatory changes, we are committed to learning from what has happened to the financial services and to maintaining our focus on simplifying regulation. I will take his point about health and safety to my colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions. I share some of his concern about our need to avoid developing in this country a culture of risk avoidance at all costs and the department’s need to develop an important role in ensuring sensible and effective health and safety regulation. Questions were asked about the timing of the consultation. All the requirements of the Act are to be included in the certificate, which implies checks and inquiries that the register will not be equipped to make. I will write to the noble Lord about the timing of the completion of the consultation once I have made further inquiries in the department. We hope that it will be possible—this is not a commitment—to make a second LRO in the first half of 2010 and a third in the second half. That is our intention, but we are not committed to doing that at this point. I thank noble Lords for their questions, and I commend the order to the Grand Committee. Motion agreed.