Deregulation Bill

Lord Mann Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

My hon. Friend raises an immensely important point. I was going to talk about it later, but let me deal with it now. He is absolutely right, and I am not talking of a few cases. We came across—and we continue to come across—many, many cases on which, given our way, we would certainly have deregulated, yet we found that directives made it impossible for us to do what we would have liked to have done. That is, of course, one of the reasons why, if there is a Conservative Government after the next general election, we will be seeking to renegotiate our relationship with the EU and then—as long as the Opposition do not prevent this—putting that to the British public in a referendum. It is also one of the reasons why we are trying to pass the referendum Bill right now, and we will bring it back and do so.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

It would be helpful if the right hon. Gentleman could tell us the number of regulations that he wishes to abolish but cannot. Precisely how many are there? Perhaps he could produce a list.

[Mr Letwin]

That is a very tantalising thought, so I shall go back and see whether that is possible. I am sure we can put together a list. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman or Opposition Front Benchers would like to see it very much, but it is extremely clear that there are large numbers of cases in which it would have been desirable to do things, but it is impossible to do so because of the structure of directives that we inherited. Most of those directives were signed up to willingly by the previous Government. It is also the case—

[John Mann]

rose—

[Mr Letwin]

The hon. Gentleman does not need to exert himself; I will give way to him again.

Of course, some EU regulation is perfectly sensible, but the problem is that much of it, unfortunately, forces us to do things in ways that we would much prefer were not the case. I suspect that, if the hon. Gentleman were to look at some of that regulation, he would agree with me.

[John Mann]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Certainly the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) does wave eccentrically. There is not necessarily anything disorderly about it, but it may offend the sensibilities of some right hon. and hon. Members, a point to which I am sure, as always, the hon. Gentleman will be sensitive.

[John Mann]

I certainly would not wish to offend the Minister; I merely want an answer. He said “many”; he said “many, many”; and I think he said “excessive”. How many regulations—he has been through them all—has he not been able to deal with in the Bill because of European legislation? Is it 10, 20, 50, 100 or 1,000?

[Mr Letwin]

I will send the hon. Gentleman a list. It will not be exhaustive, but I suspect it will contain hundreds, rather than tens, of cases for which we would have wished to do something different. Of course we have not kept an exhaustive tally—there is no point, because we cannot change those things in domestic legislation, which is what the Bill is about.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Rutley]

I agree with my hon. Friend completely. There has been great determination not only to reduce the deficit, but to build a plan for growth. Deregulation is a fundamental part of that plan, so I praise the work of the Minister for Government Policy and other Ministers who have made invaluable contributions.

The Government have turned their attention to not only the stock of regulations, but the flow of new regulations—the river that is running into the swamp that we are looking to drain. Their progress has been so good that their one in, one out approach has become a one in, two out rule. Ministers must remove twice the cost of any new regulation that they introduce. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), who also made an invaluable contribution in this area as a Minister, that is a culture change that will keep us on the path to more jobs and increased growth.

I welcome the fact that hundreds of regulations have been improved, modified or removed by the Government, and that they are being more ambitious still in the Bill by aiming to improve or sweep away thousands more. As the Prime Minister said, this will be

“the first government in modern history that at the end of its parliamentary term has less regulation in place than there was at the beginning.”

That must be an important priority. With the eurozone in a sluggish period of economic growth and an in/out referendum on the cards in the UK following a Conservative victory at the next election, the Bill will hopefully not only help the UK to tackle its own challenges, but provide the impetus for serious deregulatory reform in Europe.

[John Mann]

As co-chair of the all-party group on mountaineering, what is the hon. Gentleman’s view of how clause 1 will apply to mountain guides and those who take people climbing? As he well knows, all mountain guides in this country are self-employed, even though many of them work within organisations and agencies such as the Plas y Brenin centre in north Wales. How will removing the general health and safety responsibility from self-employed mountain guides affect health and safety in that industry?

[David Rutley]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, and I am sure that he and I will wish to debate it outside the Chamber—

--- Later in debate ---

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

For this flagship Government Bill, one wonders where all the Tories have gone. They seem rather reluctant to participate in the debate, whereas on these Benches—[Interruption.] Fine dialogue on modernising the structure of the Labour party might well be going on elsewhere. Colleagues have rightly seen that the mishmash of junk that has been presented as the Deregulation Bill is virtually worthless—so much so that it does not even warrant attendance.

The Bill should be called the Deregulation (of previous Tory laws) Bill. The Minister who opened the debate, despite being such a learned man, suggested that it was undoing the ills of previous Labour Governments, but the truth is rather different. The following clauses remove previous Tory legislation: clauses 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 36, 46, 47, 49, 50, 53, 57, 59 and 60—virtually the entire Bill. The same is true of the detail, as schedules 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16 and 17 remove previous Tory legislation. I am therefore in favour of some of those changes—although not all—because they relate to irrelevant legislation that should never have been on the statute book in the first place. Redundant and irrelevant Tory legislation is rightly being removed, although of course, being the Tory party, they have to throw in half the legislation on health and safety.

[Neil Carmichael]

I have not had time to flick through every clause in the Bill, but who was in power in 2004 when the regulations on the management of child trust funds were introduced, and who was in power in 2003—this is a choice example—when we were legislating on the provision of late-night refreshment?

[John Mann]

As the hon. Gentleman said, he has not had time to read the Bill, which is why I itemised, for the record, every clause and schedule that removes Tory legislation. In fact, around 80% of the legislation being removed is Tory legislation. Indeed, when the Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), responds, he will doubtless wish to outline which bits he introduced in his various ministerial guises. Given his ministerial longevity, there will undoubtedly be several regulations that he was personally responsible for but now wishes to remove, and we on the Opposition Benches might wish to back him on that.

However, the Minister for Government Policy, a highly educated and learned gentleman, did not, when receiving his challenge on self-employment and safety, know what he was talking about. I cited, in relation to clause 1, what would happen with a self-employed mountain guide. He immediately jumped in to assist his hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley), who was struggling, because he knew that I was right and that the clause represents an undoing of the self-employed mountain guide’s employment position. There is a critical flaw in the logic of the Bill. Mountain guides require insurance, and to get it they need to demonstrate that there is a health and safety profile, and that is relevant for those who employ self-employed mountain guides who take people out on ropes. By the way, I personally managed to negotiate, on behalf of the all-party group on mountaineering, exemption from the working at heights directive anomalies that affected that profession, demonstrating that the way the industry works meant it was not safe to put that application into place. I am not, therefore, on the side of unnecessary regulation, but the protection of the employment position of those self-employed people is fundamental.

A better-known example, the single biggest civil litigation case brought by a group of workers against a Government, demonstrates the issue more brutally. That common-law action brought by workers in the mining industry, for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and Vibration White Finger, cost the Government a huge amount of money, because the people involved were employed primarily by the Government, so it was a taxpayer liability, although there were some private companies. The civil action was successful because the litigators had demonstrated that appropriate practices and procedures were not in place. If there had been proper regulation of the mining industry at the time, the cost to the health of the men forced to bring the case would have been hugely reduced, as would the financial cost to the taxpayer and other employers, which went into many billions.

That is the point of good regulation. A good health and safety procedure—for example on use of breathing equipment in a colliery or the handling of vibrating tools—would have been a mitigating factor in those processes, and a huge mitigating factor in terms of compensation. That is precisely why self-employed mountain guides require a structure within which they can get insurance and quantify it, to take them out of the provisions of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974. What we are doing is leading to a lawyers’ paradise in which the agency that might employ people, and the individual, will be able to battle between one another over who is liable, if it can be demonstrated in court that particular procedures were not followed. A requirement of responsibility under health and safety law gives protection to that self-employed person as well as to the agency employing them.

Let me tell the House why I know that. When I ran a small business—as I did for many years—we had to deal with working at heights and a range of legislation, and I shall illustrate my point with some examples. A case was brought against us by an employee who had broken his foot. However, because of manual handling at work legislation and the fact that we had applied it, the case got nowhere. That was precisely because the legislation had created a structure with a sensible and rational procedure, which we could demonstrate and insist that the employee followed. When he did not follow that procedure, we could demonstrate that as the employer—with liability—we were not in fact liable for the accident.

It is a myth that good regulation damages small business. I lived with regulation day in, day out, and if we ask small businesses, we find that they nearly always object to two things: paperwork—that is always a nightmare—and cost. When small businesses complain—and when I did—it is about cost. If regulation costs a lot and someone is trying to make ends meet, it is difficult. However, regulations on manual handling at work, and health and safety legislation, do not involve cost other than training the work force. It is a miniscule cost. It is an absurdity when someone is handling heavy goods, as we were, not to have such regulation. Let me give a second example.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

The hon. Gentleman is making a passionate defence of the regulations under which he successfully defended a claim many years ago, but the Bill does not affect health and safety legislation as far as small employers—such as those whom he is speaking so eloquently in favour of, and such as he was—are concerned. It is an interesting illustration of the value of health and safety regulation, which I do not dispute, but what on earth has it got to do with the Government’s proposals?

[John Mann]

When even the Minister who is responding to the debate has not read the Bill it is a bit of a problem. Read schedule 1. Most of the employees that I had were self-employed—[Laughter.]

[Mr Clarke]

I am sorry; that is what fooled me.

[John Mann]

I do not find it amusing that the Government introducing the Bill have no idea what goes on in workplaces and of the effect that this change will have, so let me illustrate my point. In the kind of work that we were doing, such as setting up major concerts in huge halls, a variety of different people come in and work together. Who is responsible for ensuring that the ladders going up—perhaps 50, 60, 70 feet—are secure? If it is a self-employed person, without that requirement in law because of this change, that buck—that burden—can be shifted. One critical thing in such a situation is having an overall duty because then everyone is liable. When working in complex spaces, with people going backwards and forwards carrying huge loads of equipment, lugging it and putting it up on high, all—whether a single person, a company or a company bringing in self-employed people, as we often did—ensure that the systems and the space is properly secured because they have a responsibility without exclusion.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s arguments. His scenario is that of several self-employed people working as contractors in an umbrella organisation, but there is nothing in the Bill or clause 1 that would absolve that umbrella organisation from any health and safety aspect that I can see. His examples just do not apply.

[John Mann]

As I illustrated with the mining industry, if we move away from regulation, it will lead to civil litigation, and exactly the same will happen with the clauses in this Bill. That is illustrative not of a specific measure in the Bill in relation to the mining industry, but of the principle that moving away from good regulation creates a liability. It is not a cost saving for the employer because that liability comes back. In such a situation, yes, the Bill would have an impact because there is no overriding factor—that is the point. The case of the mountain guides is a wonderful example because the person who owns the mountain is normally the general public. We cannot say, “Ah well, this private landowner is responsible for this bolt coming out and this person who has been guided up falling to their death.” That is why this form of legislation came in.

The Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe is the sole Euro-fanatic in the Tory parliamentary party these days. He is more Euro-fanatic than my good self. I note that in the past hour, UKIP has just nicked one of my Bills put to this Parliament about shifting the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to Manchester, and proclaimed it as its own.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Let me try and drag the hon. Gentleman back to the actual debate. With his vast business experience and knowledge, will he please explain how most of his employees were self-employed? That is a clear contradiction in terms.

[John Mann]

We are now dealing with the most extraordinary Conservative party. When the people being brought in are self-employed—and that is not an unusual situation—it depends what industry they are working in—[Interruption.] They are the contractors who are brought in. The hon. Gentleman may wish to make pedantic points, rather than getting to the heart of the weakness of the Bill.

[Mr Letwin]

rose—

[John Mann]

I will take an intervention from the Minister who got the position on mountain guides wrong.

[Mr Letwin]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I would scarcely have engaged in diminishing the brilliance of his eloquence were it not for the fact that it may be that someone reading Hansard would be misled into supposing that what he is talking about had any kind of rhyme or reason in it at all. Actually, if he was the employer, he would continue to be covered by health and safety legislation as before. That will always be the case for the employer, regardless of whether the people working for an employer are contracted to him as self-employed or otherwise. If he is really serious about this, he will attend to the fact that what we are doing is removing Health and Safety at Work, etc. 1974 Act provisions for those self-employed people themselves in those occupations which are not prescribed and are, therefore, without risk to other people.

[John Mann]

As the Minister knows, the definition of what is risk to other people is entirely subjective.

[Mr Letwin]

I am sorry, but it will not be in any way subjective; it will be utterly objective in the sense that the Health and Safety Executive will be publishing a list of the prescribed activities that will continue to be covered by the 1974 Act.

[John Mann]

We will see which are included and which are not. When the Minister talked about mountain guides, he gave the example of a regulator that does not exist for that profession. That was the example he gave to promote his Bill and demonstrate that it would be regulated. Wrong. That regulator does not exist in relation to mountain guides; it is an entirely different body with nothing whatever to do with them.

Perhaps Conservative Members would like to listen, because I have worked in this situation. For example, when working to set up a concert there will be a range of different people: some will be self-employed and some will be employed. If overall responsibility for health and safety is removed from the self-employed, that will put everybody at risk, because that responsibility will no longer be defined. That is a fundamental flaw in the Bill that the Ministers clearly have not thought through.

The Minister for Government Policy put up the wrong regulator in the example I cited. I personally negotiated with the previous Government the exemption from the working at heights directive on precise technicalities. I demonstrated that it was not safer to be included. Despite the perception, it would not have provided health and safety. In climbing, there are two ropes. The worst-case contingency training did not allow for one of those ropes snapping, so the directive was a nonsense. It was not a nonsense in terms of the principle of the law; it was a nonsense in the detail. The principle of deregulation should be that if regulation is not effective—when it is useless, when it does not work and when it is outdated—it should be removed, as has been the case for stuff going back 150 years.

[David Mowat]

The hon. Gentleman said that the Minister referred to the wrong regulator. May I then refer to the right regulator in his eyes: the HSE? Why does he think that the HSE supports this deregulation if it contains all the evils that he suggests?

[John Mann]

The HSE does not regulate training for mountain guides. As with any risk assessment, the responsibility for risk assessment, given that there is a health and safety duty, lies with the individual. That is the basis on which the voluntary organisations across the world and in this country that oversee health and safety standards operate. The duty to need to have that risk assessment, and that health and safety duty, is just as applicable for the self-employed as it is for those employing others, so there is no difference in that example.

Let me cite another example of how good regulation works. The Minister said that there were hundreds of pieces of European legislation that should be removed, but he could cite none of them. In our business we worked all over Europe. We had to drive lorries across Europe before good regulation came in. If we did a job in Hungary, we had to drive through France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria and Hungary. There was different regulation for lorries and heavy goods vehicles in each of those countries at that time, and some of the differences were huge. For example, we could not drive on certain roads in Austria. There were different speeds and different specs covering what kind of vehicle was allowed. In terms of free trade, that was a lot of regulation in many countries, and I would suggest that there is now sensible regulation.

Virtually all the regulation emanating from Europe is to do with the single market. The figure that I have read is 90%, but the Minister without Portfolio is a greater expert on this than me, so I am sure he can confirm that. A single market requires regulations so that products can be sold on an equal basis, and they are counter to import controls. Import controls and regulation do not go together; they are polar opposites. If the Conservative party is saying—it would be useful to have this clarification—that it intends to remove a lot of European legislation on the single market, which import controls would it bring back in? Many economists and others would say that import controls are a cost on business, just as civil litigation costs, as the mining industry found, are a cost on business. Good regulation, especially on health and safety, protects the position of the self-employed and the employer. It is not a burden on them, but a protection to them, as well as the worker concerned.

There is some good stuff in the Bill. The provisions on rights of way may well speed up a long drawn out process and ensure that they are brought in properly, appropriately and speedily. That may well be a very good thing, but it would have been useful also to have dealt with regulation on health and safety in graveyards. They are the perfect example: there was no regulation, and 3 million gravestones, due to what many people described as health and safety, were staked. There was no regulation for that; it was precisely the absence of regulation that led to 3 million gravestones being staked. The House may recall that I am a qualified topple tester in graveyard health and safety. What happened was due to the same problem that the mining industry faced: insurance risk. Insurers demanded action, but there was no coherent regulation that said, “Here is what the health and safety standard should be.” Faced with pressure from insurers, people did their own thing—they made it up as they went along—but that is precisely what the Bill proposes should happen in many areas. That is the principle behind what Ministers are proposing, but the Bill will shift the burden on to insurance companies and the courts, and that is not protection for the employer.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Given the hon. Gentleman’s aversion to releasing the self-employed who do not pose a risk to anyone else from health and safety legislation, will he explain why countries such as France, Germany and Italy do not bring the self-employed under the terms of health and safety?

[John Mann]

I will not give a detailed exposition about climbing guides in France and Germany, save to say that they have a formalised responsibility for health and safety.

[Mr Wallace]

As a Parliamentary Private Secretary, I am sorry to break the convention of the House by rising to speak, but I am a qualified Austrian and British ski instructor, as well as an avalanche safety instructor, and I can tell the hon. Gentleman, to put him out of his misery, that a person’s qualification, by its recognition, gives them not only insurance, but cover from being sued, and that the people who grant the qualification are obliged under health and safety and other legislation to instruct people in accordance with recognised standards.

[John Mann]

The hon. Gentleman will therefore know that he has a legal duty, if he is taking people with him, to carry out a risk assessment, and the removal of precisely that legal duty is the danger of clause 1. That is the danger of ill-thought-through legislation—[Interruption.] Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall pause to ensure that Government Members are listening.

I can give another example of good regulation that was absent for a century but which the Government dare not include in the Bill. I am talking about safety at football stadiums. For 100 years, there was disaster after disaster—two at Ibrox; one at Bolton, Birmingham, Bradford and Hillsborough—but no effective regulation. It was a case of, “Make it up as you go along.” In 1968, a stand burned down at the stadium of the Minister without Portfolio’s local team, Nottingham Forest, but no safety regulation was brought in for football or sports stadiums. Had it been introduced, it would undoubtedly have covered wooden stands. A repeat incident took place in 1985 in a virtually identical stand, which shows the danger of not having effective regulation.

There is another contradiction with this Government. We have heard several times about the one in, two out principle, but the precise definition of “one in” is regulation under statutory instrument. The Department for Communities and Local Government has handed to local authorities regulation in disguise. Over the past year, the Government have put a range of regulatory barriers in the way of self-builders, but they have not classified it as new regulation. They have introduced the barrier of pre-planning consultation fees and extra charges on developers and new builders, and they have introduced the community infrastructure levy and applied it to self-builds, which is another form of regulation. Being a Nottinghamshire MP, the Minister will know that in Nottinghamshire self-building has come to a complete stop. The first local authority to apply the levy was Newark and Sherwood, since when there have been no self-builds. Builders are not building one or two-plot developments because of the burdens on industry.

The Government have gone further, however, and brought in the affordable housing levy for single dwellings, meaning that in Newark a builder or a couple wishing to build their own home have to face those barriers and pay up to £50,000 in new taxes. That is not counted as regulation, but I say it is regulation and a burden on business. In Nottinghamshire, the policy is decimating small family building companies that rely on this kind of work, which is why there are virtually no one, two or three-dwelling property starts in Nottinghamshire. Newark and Sherwood led the way, and others have followed, using new regulation—new burdens on small builders and aspiring home owners—brought in over the past 12 months.

I trust that the Minister will confirm that there will be a change and that these burdens—[Laughter.] The Minister for Government Policy laughs, but it is no laughing matter for the couple in Tuxford who are told they have to pay £64,000 in taxes before they can even start building their own property under policies introduced by this Government. I want confirmation in this debate that that burden on business will be classified as regulation. In terms of one in, two out, they can be classified as part of the in; at the moment, they are not. This is fundamental to the Government’s approach of shifting the burden on to the courts—we will see more cases going to court—and insurers under the pretext that this is all the fault of Labour regulation.

I will end on this—[Interruption.] I have never been in a debate like this, Madam Deputy Speaker, with such rudeness—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has indicated that he is about to draw his remarks to a close after more than half an hour of a passionate and perfectly in order speech. Hon. Members should not dissuade him from so doing.

[John Mann]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Had they been required, I could have given a range of other examples to demonstrate my point.

I come at this from the perspective of someone who has run a small business and who can say unequivocally that good, effective regulation is pro-business, that removing good regulation is anti-business, and that removing regulation will shift the burden to the courts and insurers, and will destroy small and medium-sized enterprises. In their ignorance of the small business sector, that is what the Government are doing.

The Government are slaves to the saying, “Red tape is bad.” Of course, red tape is bad. The Bill gets rid of much bad Tory legislation—nearly 80% of the Bill removes Tory legislation—that was contested at the time and should never have come in. Labour Members accept, I am sure, their apologies and their recompense to society shown through their being prepared to get rid of it, but alongside those measures they have thrown in a few gems introduced by Labour that protect workers and employers, and fundamentally protect the self-employed and small businesses.

I look forward to hearing from the Minister how much European legislation can be identified. It is nonsense to suggest that the Government are anti-regulation, given that, as I have demonstrated with DCLG, they are powering in taxation and burdens on small businesses in my area and elsewhere through the back door. Their disingenuous approach needs to be exposed. Nevertheless, I welcome the fact that a raft of bad Tory legislation will be confined to the dustbin, if the Bill—in a greatly amended and improved form, I hope—reaches the statute book.

I will finish with a comment about the amendment from the Greens. Perhaps a coalition is forming—a plan for the future—although there are not very many Greens now, and there will be fewer after the next election. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), speaking for the Green party, cited the Green Building Council, but what does that do? Of course it is the glaziers promoting a specific type of window that is enforced on all house builders. There is legislation that means that for those who, like me, live in a listed building, every single window that is repaired, however minor, should by law go for individual planning consent, at great expense to the householder, but also at cost to the developer. I notice that none of that kind of thing is dealt with by this Bill. There is a lot of talk, but when it comes to the vested interest of the Green Building Council and the regulation introduced to give a competitive advantage to certain sections of industry, there is not a single word in this Bill. For those who want to see some of the red tape removed, there will be an opportunity for Members on both sides to propose amendments to the Bill to ensure that such burdens on business, which should not be there, are removed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

I am very grateful to hear it because by its very nature a deregulatory Bill gives rise to many points that can be raised in Committee.

The hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) raised a lot of detailed points, and said that they should be considered in Committee. He has already served on the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee. It is inevitable, when the British cover such a wide variety of things in regulation, that we sometimes have to have an item-by-item vote.

I take it from the tone of the debate today that the general direction of policy set out by the Government has fairly widespread approval. I have endured the experience of opposition, albeit briefly, in my time, and I occasionally had the burden of being sent along to a debate of this kind and trying to find something to argue about. I think that that was the problem facing the two very able Front-Bench speakers representing the Opposition today.

A strange argument broke out at one point today about whether what we were doing was totally insubstantial, worthless and of no point to the outside world, or whether it was completely horrendous and, as the Green amendment, which is no longer being pressed, says,

“ripping up vital green legislation”.

It was suggested that our blood should run cold at the idea of what we were doing to everyone from those climbing mountains to those running small businesses.

The claim was also made that the last Government had somehow achieved £3 billion of savings through their strident deregulatory measures. I am not here to debate the record of the last Government, but that is quite the most startling exposition of what they achieved that I have ever heard. I do not recommend that any Labour spokesman should try to persuade an audience of any of the small businessmen I have ever met that that was what they were doing.

The Bill represents the most determined effort of any Government I have known to pursue the deregulatory aims to which most Governments have paid lip service for the past 20 years. We were all into deregulation in the early 1990s; then the Labour Government talked about “better regulation”. I believe that this Government can claim that the substance of what we are producing greatly exceeds anything that has been done before.

Some of the figures that have been quoted about the impact of the Bill disguise the fact that it is only one part of the red tape challenge that is being led by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Government Policy. The Bill runs alongside and is part of that challenge, and it contains the elements that require primary legislation. My right hon. Friend has mentioned the 3,000 regulations that need to be repealed or improved.

The Bill has to be big enough and long enough to deal with so many detailed areas, and it will supplement and add to that to produce a deregulatory effect for businesses—particularly small businesses—as well as individual citizens, local authorities and branches of government, all of which have better things to do than to waste money on statutory duties the reason for which no one knows, or to produce reports that nobody reads or to have obligations for things that nobody is asking them to give advice on. For example, school governors have to publish advice on discipline. Our reforms will not undermine school discipline; my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education has talked about the need for school discipline. Most governors do not even know they are under such an obligation, but unfortunately some do produce a statement of policy, which is not required. That regulation will now be repealed.

The key part of the Bill is the one that relates to business. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) on this. I think we will need a Bill of this kind every 10 years or so. In modern times, as a result of single-issue lobby groups and newspaper campaigns, Government Departments engage in ever-more legislative and regulatory activity, sometimes for the sake of being seen to be doing something or, in the case of the lobby groups, being seen to be demanding something new. That has an adverse effect not only on the statute book and the regulatory publications but on the administration of good government and the running of any successful business. The Bill is therefore a welcome, and drastic, attempt to change the culture and go back in the direction of common sense and proper regulation that involves a true public interest and to ensure that environmental standards and the safety of workers are maintained.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), echoed by the hon. Member for Hartlepool, got on to matters that were of concern to her. Although such things can be discussed in Committee, I have to say that an attempt was being made to make a difference of principle that was not there. For example, we had the issue of employment rights and of the tribunals dealing with claims by employees against their employer. Let me make it absolutely clear that the Bill is not remotely trying to roll back the law on unfair dismissal or to reduce the protections against discrimination in the work place.

The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) tried to identify the party political origin of every measure in the Bill. As it happens, it was a Conservative Government who set up employment tribunals, introduced employment rights and started the whole process that we now have. The intention was to provide a sensible, accessible and low cost way of resolving disputes and awarding compensation where some breach of employment rights had taken place. Over the years, the system has become legalistic. It has become almost habitual for anybody who loses their job to bring a claim, because there is very little risk to them and a great deal of encouragement to have a go. None of that is being tackled too directly by the Bill.

Addressing the power and cost of tribunals is much overdue. The principal fundamentals of employment rights are utterly beyond dispute nowadays. For the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central to claim that this Bill is a serious threat to the real principles underlying employment rights and achieves no important benefits shows that she has not met enough employers. When we talk to small employers about the problems of running a competitive business, most will rapidly start raising the problem and cost of claims before employment tribunals. The changes we propose could be criticised for being too modest, but they are certainly heading in the right direction. They should not invite a knee-jerk reaction from the Labour party, or anybody else, that nothing should be done to deregulate in that area and to remove unnecessary cost.

Similarly, on health and safety, absolutely nobody is suggesting, in this Bill or anywhere else, that we lower standards in this country when it comes to protecting the health and safety of the work force, or anybody else. We are not short of regulation in that area. Most of it will remain intact, but what is proposed here seems to be perfectly sensible. The biggest single change is to take away the burdens of health and safety legislation from self-employed people who are not in an occupation that can pose a threat to other people, as will be specified. It is absurd. Let us take a self-employed person, not one of those self-employed contractors in the business of the hon. Member for Bassetlaw, but someone writing a novel in his cottage in the countryside in Dorset. He is a self-employed person. Is Labour going to argue passionately in Committee that he should be subject to health and safety at work legislation, which he is at the moment? Of course he is not likely to be sued unless he throws a book at somebody in a moment of bad temper, but even that is probably not a breach of the health and safety at work legislation. He is subject to inspection. He may have to pay regard to the guidance. I have taken an extreme example of what should be a harmless occupation—if he is a reasonable novelist.

There is a range of other self-employed people who may have to take professional advice on what impact the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 has on their particular activities. We are proposing to clarify that health and safety legislation applies to those people who are engaged in activities that could pose a risk to people other than themselves. Clarity will come when we produce information—as soon as we can in the course of the Committee, as my right hon. Friend the Minister for Government Policy has said—on the specified sectors of the economy and specified occupations. A statutory burden will be lifted from a wide range of self-employed people who have been covered by it by accident.

[John Mann]

No self-employed novelists have had health and safety inspections or a burden that they have had to consider. Is not the problem that once we say a line will be drawn and some will be covered and some will not, that creates a grey area? The grey area creates danger and damage and risk, including for the person themselves.

[Mr Clarke]

I deliberately chose, as the hon. Gentleman did at the other extreme, the rather way-out example with my self-employed novelist. I have not done the research on which self-employed people have found themselves subject to inspection, the recipients of guidance they do not want or feeling obliged to take inspections. I do not know whether self-employed beekeepers or all sorts of other people fall into this area, but there is no doubt that the legislative change and the clarity proposed will put the duty and burden on those who might pose a risk to others and move it from vast numbers of other people. Our independent regulatory committee has estimated the saving for the businesses of many self-employed people.

[John Mann]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman gives the example of a self-employed beekeeper. A beekeeper friend of mine was nearly killed when moving a hive during rain because he was not aware of the dangers during rain. If the person moving it with him had nearly been killed, there might have been a claim against him. Does that not illustrate precisely why an overarching approach is far better than additional regulation and somebody deciding who is in and who is out?

[Mr Clarke]

I admire the eclecticism of the hon. Gentleman. I knew that I could not engage with him on mountain climbing but I underestimated his knowledge of bees and beekeepers. I shall take considered advice on the application to beekeeping and I have no doubt that the matter will be raised in Committee if the position of beekeepers becomes a point of real contention when the list is published. The point that I am trying to make is that I think that the vast majority of self-employed people—I shall not name another esoteric profession—need not be covered by legislation, subject to the Health and Safety Executive, inspection and so on, or to take professional advice. We are rationalising and making sense of one area whereas otherwise our commitment to the health and safety at work of employees and the health and safety of the public remains undiminished.

Another measure that all Opposition Members tried to make a mainstream political point about is the growth duty we are putting on non-economic regulators. I am not a climate change denier; the Government are in favour of environmental protection, and the conservation of our habitat and essential national heritage is a perfectly important objective of the Government. It is completely over the top to describe the changes in the Bill as sometimes threatening all that. We are saying that the various non-economic regulators should have regard to the desirability of the growth of the economy while carrying out their other duties. That was described as a mad dash for casino growth and likened to our casting away of regulation on bankers, which we did not do—it was the previous Government who did that. I would have agreed with the hon. Member for Bassetlaw had he cited that example, as it was a good example of the importance of regulation and the pathetic inadequacy of the Financial Services Authority when the then Chancellor gave it that responsibility. In this case, all that we are doing is saying that while it remains liable to follow its existing guidance—it has been pointed out that it is supposed to regulate only where necessary and proportionate—it is supposed to have regard to the impact on individual businesses, and it should have regard to the growth of the nation. Serious conservation in a highly developed, advanced economy like ours and the protection of our natural environment have to take account of the fact that at the same time, we hope to be a growing economy and a powerful, modern, industrial nation. It is a question of balance, judgment and common sense between the Government’s economic interests and our desire to conserve what is best in our heritage. Describing the Bill as an attack on that is absurd.

That shows why the previous Government’s record was pathetic on deregulation and reducing the burdens on business. They constantly gave in to pressures that drove them in the other direction, and it requires a Government with clarity of purpose to get hold of the subject and make a detailed attempt to reduce unnecessary burdens, bureaucracy and paperwork. The printing of useless documents and general obstructions to growth and efficiency need to be removed if that is to be a success.

I welcome the fact that some things received universal approval. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) discussed what we are doing on apprenticeships, and no one gainsaid him on that. Those are important measures that will strengthen skills training in industry and help to improve young people’s prospects of employment. The measures on yarn received widespread support from those in the House who do knitwork. The measures on rights of way achieved remarkably unanimous acceptance—this is an impossibly controversial area, but the stakeholders’ group has reached agreement. The Government’s proposals have been advanced, and I am glad that they have been accepted.

There was talk of the European Union. We are going to try to secure the application of the same principles there, and Barroso has begun a deregulatory drive, which faces the same difficulty in Europe that it has always faced in Britain, because most of the regulations are supported by some lobby or other. The European regulations are the result of the single market. To stay in the single market required a mass of regulations. When the then Government pressed for the single market to be created, the British Commissioner whom we appointed—Arthur Cockfield, I think—came up with thousands of amendments, which were required in a single market if it was to have common regulation, as we heard, of consumer rights, safety standards, consumer protection, environmental protection and so on.

Our example should be followed in the rest of Europe, and it will help us to guide other member states to adopt the same approach. I believe that for all European countries, but it is Britain that particularly concerns me. If we are to regain our competitive position in the wider market and return to normality as one of the stronger economies in the modern world, deregulation and reducing burdens on business is part of that.

As my hon. Friends the Members for Macclesfield (David Rutley) and for Witham (Priti Patel) said, we are not saying that this is the sole answer for our economy or for small business. It is merely a contribution to a Government policy that is wholly taken up with the plan for long-term economic growth, giving particular priority to small and medium-sized enterprises in this country as never before. We are reviewing the range of advice that the Government give to small businesses and the range of financial support available to them. We have reduced the tax burden on small employers, particularly for young employees. UK Trade & Investment is concentrating on small and medium-sized businesses that want to get into export markets. We are putting a great trade effort as a Government into supporting them. We are reforming UK export finance to make sure that it is available to those small exporters.

This Bill is far from being the entirety of what we are doing to turn Britain into a competitive nation again. It does not cover everything we are doing for the small businesses that provide much of the employment nowadays if one gets one’s economy moving again, but it makes a very important contribution. We actually have a Government who are anti-regulation, anti-bureaucracy and anti-pointless cost. I commend the Bill to the House as a very useful contribution to our efforts.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Deregulation Bill (Programme)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Deregulation Bill:

Committal

(1) That the Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.

Proceedings in Public Bill Committee

(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 25 March 2014.

(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.

Consideration and Third Reading

(4) Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.

(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.

(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.

Other proceedings

(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed.—(Gavin Barwell.)

Question agreed to.

Deregulation Bill (Money)

Queen’s recommendation signified.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Deregulation Bill, it is expedient to authorise:

(1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided; and

(2) the payment of sums into the Consolidated Fund.—(Gavin Barwell.)

Question agreed to.

Deregulation Bill (Carry-Over)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 80A(1)(a)),

That if, at the conclusion of this Session of Parliament, proceedings on the Deregulation Bill have not been completed, they shall be resumed in the next Session. —(Gavin Barwell.)

Question agreed to.