I thank the Minister for that response and also the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, for his comments. We are at exactly the same place on this. I was only a bit sad that I got caught out trying to have my cake and eat it by sketching out the work which I think we agree is continuing and necessary, which will be to think harder about the regulatory functions, how best they can be delivered and—constructively and creatively—how best to do that work of review and scrutiny. On the other hand, I was taken by the “best show in town” argument: since we need something like this, why not just build on what we have, because it seems to be the best version of the body we all seem to think is necessary?
The Minister is right: the ecology of regulation needs a bit more scrutiny than it sometimes get. Of course, his work and experience here were instrumental in our thinking on this. Without that scrutiny, we will not be in a very strong place to build on the policy issues we are talking about, and to think harder about the way in which legislation and regulation will bite on individuals, companies and society as a whole. There is not an easy solution. We must just keep it under review.
I note what the Minister said in his response. Maybe we should leave things as they are for the moment, but the lessons need to be taken back to all departments, not just BIS. There may be some argument for BIS perhaps loosening its hold on this and encouraging other departments to have a bigger share of it. Although in some senses that makes it less likely to be effective because there is no champion within government, it might have the impact of raising other people’s game, which would be good. We need more thinking around that—I am not saying that we would necessarily do it at this stage.
The annual report of the RPC is very impressive, as the noble Lord said. The volume of work it does is astonishing, given that it is independent, non-statutory and has no particular locus within government. I do not know how we get these people to do the work they do, but it is a message we might pick up in other areas. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.