Deregulation Bill

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, had the privilege of serving on the Select Committee under the energetic leadership of my noble friend Lord Rooker. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Naseby. I agree with much of what he says but there are a few things that I will take issue with.

The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, who is not in his place, put forward some very impressive examples of effective regulation but I think he would agree with me—and picking up what the Minister said—that what we have in the Bill is one of those exercises that Ministers and officials across Whitehall absolutely dread. The call to arms went out from the Cabinet Office: “Something more must be done about regulation so it is your job to find more examples of regulation and bring them forward”. At a long stretch, many departments did bring things forward, so amid the many useful things in the Bill—the Select Committee commended the Bill in many respects—we have a real mishmash of odd initiatives, ranging from fire, fuel and farriers to the defence of the grey squirrel and much else, as we have already seen. As the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, very eloquently put it, the Bill has proved an irresistible magnet for all manner of things which the committee never had a chance to look at and which the House will want to debate. These measures were shoved in without warning, consultation or thought for the implications for public safety and security, as my noble friend Lord Monks said. I am sure that this will be followed up by many noble Lords.

We make it very clear in our support for the Bill that we are in full support of proportionate regulation to enable enterprise of all sorts to flourish—who could not be? The Bill, however, suffers from being, in large part, opportunistic. Indeed, there are elements of the Bill, as we explored in our debate, about the cavalier treatment of Parliament itself. The Bill will benefit from close scrutiny from your Lordships. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has already discussed the extraordinary Clause 51 in the draft Bill which would have given Ministers carte blanche to declare, by order, that certain legislation could be removed,

“if the Minister considers that it is no longer of practical use”.

Our evidence found that neither officials nor Ministers could tell us what on earth that clause actually meant, let alone what it would do; so, very sensibly, Ministers decided to throw it out. My only surprise was that the reason they gave was that there was no public appetite for it. I should have thought that that was the least reason, frankly.

A lot of fun went out of the committee when we lost that clause, but we still became very involved with the sorts of issues raised, for example, by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, about the Bill’s title and whether the Bill was, indeed, deregulatory in every respect. Decriminalisation as regards household waste, for example, is hardly deregulatory in a conventional sense. Likewise, we have examples in which the burden of regulation is simply shifted from one agency to another, as in some of the education clauses. My prime concern in this respect is in relation to the new duties that are created. I have to part company, sadly, with the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, over the duty to promote growth in Clause 83. This, in a Bill which aims at decluttering, is a massive piece of new clutter.

I am grateful to the Minister for circulating the draft guidance, but can he tell us in the wind-up, in fewer words than Ministers tried to tell us in the Joint Committee, how, by creating a new duty, the Government are minimising the burden on public bodies? We do not need to be told in statute how important growth is, so why on earth is this in the Bill at all? Many regulatory bodies work within a remit that presumes and encourages growth, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has already pointed out. The regulator I know best, English Heritage, conducts its primary work of conservation within the balance of priorities established, after long debate, around sustainable growth as set out in the National Planning Policy Framework.

The committee has been assured, and the House was assured this afternoon, that the clause will not confuse or override existing requirements. However, where are the safeguards that regulators will not be hauled up to account for their lack of success or lack of sincerity in promoting growth? The draft guidance, which I was grateful to see, in fact leaves it to the regulators to decide for themselves where the balance lies. It states:

“The growth duty does not automatically take precedence over or supplant existing duties held by regulators—Section 2”.

What does “not automatically” mean in this context? In their response to the committee the Government said:

“The final guidance will be published at an early stage to support Parliamentary passage of the Deregulation Bill”.

Can we have an assurance that this will be available before Committee stage in the autumn?

In short, there is a real concern that this clause could cause genuine mischief. It could be used to pressurise bodies and distort their proper functions as well as creating additional burdens to demonstrate compliance. That is not just the non-economic regulators, which have a particular problem, but the economic regulators as well. The clue as to how the Government think it will work is what the Minister said in another place—that in the last resort a business will use judicial review. I am astonished by that. Not only is it a totally inappropriate expectation to build into the legislative process, it completely sidesteps the Government’s plans to emasculate judicial review that we in this House discussed only last week. Frankly, I would much rather all this be in the Bill, where we could see it with some security. I appeal to the Minister not to use this crude definition of growth but to go back to the tried and tested definition of sustainable growth, which has been worked out in practice and is so much more consistent and sensible. Otherwise we will be into short-term improvisations regarding the nature of growth, and that would be really dangerous.

Clause 1 has already been raised as a cause of concern around the House. Our committee had several witnesses who described the changes as unnecessary, unhelpful and unwise. I know that the prescribed list has been published, but it is vague in parts, and it is not clear whether some trades are in or out. There is another aspect which exercises me: the clause requires the prescribed list to be set out by negative resolution. This is for a change which will have a major impact on safety at work. When that was challenged, the Minister gave us the reason for not using an affirmative order—that the increase in parliamentary time that would be required was not considered appropriate. We see many inadequate explanations for inadequate parliamentary scrutiny, but that is one of the worst.

Another set of policy issues flares up around the housing clauses. First, we have the reduction from five years to three years in the qualifying period for the right to buy. In all logic, given the housing crisis in this country, it is bizarre to reduce the permanent housing stock any more. Evidence from the LGA suggests that for every seven local authority homes lost, only one new one has been built. Will the Minister give a commitment to publish the impact statement before Committee? We have wasted an opportunity here to enable councils to fill the housing gap. The Bill could have allowed for the full retention of receipts by local authorities and been the vehicle to remove the housing borrowing cap.

We have in Clause 32 a useful and almost welcome new provision to create new powers for the Secretary of State to include optional requirements in building regulations. That means that, for the first time, new homes can be built which are flexible and adaptable for people growing old and people with disabilities. However, it is optional. It needs to be a requirement, not least because the only place where this is happening is in London—our thanks are due, first, to Mr Livingstone and then to Mr Johnson. If the requirement is optional, it will deter other local authorities from following the very good lead set by London.

There is much that we will return to in the Bill. There is no doubt that it has been cobbled together, and there is the sound of barrels being scraped in many clauses. However, there are useful things in it, too. I look forward to a more forensic examination in Committee.