My Lords, I hope it will be thought appropriate that before discussing the first amendment, we should take note of the resignation announced today of the Minister formerly in charge of this Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Marland. Most people would agree that the noble Lord added a certain amount of colour and indeed, candour when he was on the Front Bench, and I thank him for his friendliness and assistance in the short period we worked together on this Bill. We wish him well in his continuing role as trade ambassador.
Although he is not in his place, I should also like to welcome the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, to his new brief. I hope that he will enjoy his role on this Bill and, more generally, in relation to the department. We are, as it happens, near neighbours in Buckinghamshire. We sing tenor together in the parliamentary choir, and we also deal with the DCMS brief, although I am not sure whether he is continuing with that. We have plenty of reasons for wanting to keep in harmony and to support each other over the fraught times that we will undoubtedly face over this Bill and on other matters. If he is continuing with the DCMS brief, we will have only a short pause after today because we will be facing each other at the Dispatch Box on the Leveson report. It will not have escaped notice that the noble Viscount is the third person to occupy the position of Minister at BIS this Session, and I hope that he has a tenure more akin to that of his predecessor but one, the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, than the noble Lord, Lord Marland, and that we will get though the remaining stages of this legislation without further changes.
Going through Hansard for the first four Committee days I counted 10 issues on which the noble Lord, the former Minister, suggested that a meeting or further
discussion with officials might resolve a point raised in debate. Clearly little was going to happen during the Recess, but time moves on and I hope that the change in leadership of the Bill will not derail discussions which have been promised. Therefore, I wonder whether, in the spirit of working together on the Bill and to ensure that we have a successful resolution of the remaining stages, we can have an early meeting of the respective Bill teams. I should be grateful if the Minister will consider that.
Moving on to the amendment, in December 2010, the Government published a policy document entitled Reducing Regulation Made Simple in which they announced their intention that all new domestic legislation imposing a regulatory burden on businesses or civil society organisations would be required to include a review clause and a sunset clause. This reflected a commitment made in the coalition agreement to,
“impose sunset clauses on regulations and regulators to ensure that the need for each regulation is regularly reviewed”.
In March 2011, they announced the publication of Sunsetting Regulations: Guidance, intended to,
“assist Departments in implementing the Government’s commitment to introduce sunset clauses in new regulations”.
The guidance covers the application of sunsetting and reviewing to new domestic regulations that impose burdens on business or civil society, including legislation implementing international regulatory obligations.
The aim of this policy is to remove regulatory burdens on businesses and civil society by ensuring that regulations are: subject to regular review, to determine whether the policy objectives that led to the introduction of the regulations still apply and whether regulation is still necessary in achieving those objectives; and that regulations which are unnecessary or burdensome are removed. We agree with that approach. However, we think that it should go further.
Amendment 26EA deals with the needs for stakeholders to be given a statutory role. For example, the British Retail Consortium stated in its written submission to the Committee on the Bill in another place:
“We welcome the intention of the introduction of sunset clauses and other deregulatory measures in the Bill ... However, we are not optimistic that these will all deliver their potential, given our experience with the Red Tape Challenge and One in, One out. We need to see genuine sunset reviews when the term is up, with a formal role for stakeholders”.—[Official Report, Commons Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, 12/7/12; col. 562.]
Businesses and other relevant stakeholders should surely be able to shape the Government’s thinking on business policy in general and sunset provisions in particular. It is of little help to businesses and the wider economy if somebody in Whitehall decides, unilaterally and without consultation, to apply sunset provisions when businesses or other groups might consider them to be successful or not in need of termination. We need to ensure that business policy is not dictated to businesses, but is produced in full consultation with them. In particular, we need to ensure that SMEs are heard: after all, in many respects, large organisations have the ear of the Government because they can employ public relations or lobby organisations.
It may well be argued that this amendment is unnecessary, as Ministers responsible for legislation and regulation will get the views of businesses, civic leaders and so on continuously. But it is interesting that paragraph 39 of the sunsetting guidance states:
“In carrying out reviews, departments will need to consider how best to gather information and views from businesses, civil society organisations, and others affected by the regulation”.
It goes on to note that, “a formal consultation may”— I emphasise “may”—
“form a valuable part of this process”.
Surely, this should be a duty on government and not left as a question of,
“how best to gather information and views from businesses, civil society … and others”.
It may well be appropriate for a proportionate approach to be adopted but certain minimum standards should certainly be present. We think it is important for businesses, business organisations, trade unions and other stakeholders to be assured that they will be consulted on sunsetting proposals. Business policymaking together, between the Government and relevant stakeholders, will always make for better legislation, regulation and policy.
I shall also speak briefly to Amendment 26EB. Like the other amendment to which I have just spoken, this is pro-business. In my role as a shadow Minister, I speak with businesses regularly and one common thing that businesses say is that, more than anything else, they require certainty from government. Provide businesses with a stable and certain policy environment in which government decisions are made—in consultation, obviously, with businesses and other stakeholders—adhered to and announced with sufficient time for businesses to plan and adapt, and businesses will have the ingenuity, entrepreneurial skill and flair to do their bit to boost the economy, create growth and provide employment opportunities.
Conversely, if there is an uncertain environment in which businesses are unsure of the general policy direction of the Government—if the Government lack a “compelling vision” for the economy, for instance, as the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills recently stated—and there are ad hoc, knee-jerk and ill thought-through policies announced without due consultation with businesses or sufficient time for them to adapt, investment and confidence will undoubtedly plummet.
In a nutshell, the purpose of the amendment is to ensure that changes to non-urgent regulations, particularly the sunset provisions outlined in the clause, come into force or end their period in force on one of only two dates in a year. We have chosen 6 April and 1 October because these dates are already familiar to businesses from the regulatory environment.
The amendment is needed because the Government are not complying with their own principles. I gather that the April 2011 statement on new regulation did not give three months’ notice for any changes to regulations and that it even included changes which had occurred three months previously. As I understand it, the September 2011 statement of new regulation was backward-looking, hardly giving business time to
prepare and providing no prior warning of regulation changes. There was hardly any progress with the April 2012 statement of new regulation, which again included no changes to regulations three months prior to their coming into effect but included some changes that had occurred four months earlier. This means that businesses do not have adequate time to plan, adapt and make use of what is coming along. Statutory muscle is needed here; that is the purpose behind this amendment.