Business of the House

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Oliver Letwin

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I will give way to the leader of the Green party, and then perhaps I should make some progress.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, and thank him for his work on the Bill. If ever there was a time to justify looking at a Bill swiftly, surely this is it, when we are on a cliff edge, about to fall out of the EU, which is not what 17.4 million people voted for. Does he agree that, as Bills go, this is pretty straightforward? It is not complex. It is a vital insurance policy that is needed just in case all these other processes, not least the discussions going on between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, fail.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Oliver Letwin

Committee: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

New clauses 62 and 63. I do apologise. I am very bad at remembering the nomenclature, but I know which ones I am talking about. They are the ones that relate to the environment—their proponent, the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), is sitting behind the hon. Lady—and we had a long discussion about them earlier in Committee. Since those discussions inside the House, many of my hon. Friends, including my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), and I have had considerable conversations outside the House with various people, such as the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, green non-governmental organisations and others. I am now confident that the Government will bring forward proper new primary legislation to create an independent body outside the House with prosecutorial powers that will replace the Commission as the independent arbiter to enforce environmental rules and to ensure that the Government are taken to task in court without the need for the expense of class action lawsuits.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

rose—

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

May I continue for a second? I may anticipate what the hon. Lady is going to say, but I will give way if I do not.

In addition to such a body being put on a statutory basis, I am confident that included in the relevant legislation will be a direct reference to the principles, so that it is clear that the policy statement, which will be mandated, must look to those principles and must explain how the Government of the day intend to carry forward the principles into action. The policy statement will then become justiciable and will, under the forthcoming legislation, receive support in the form of a resolution of this House and will therefore attain a statutory force of its own.

[Caroline Lucas]

rose—

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[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I agree with my hon. Friend. He is being unduly modest, because in large part it is due to pressure from him that the Government have introduced such an effective and incisive Bill in a timely fashion. I agree that that gives us considerable confidence about what will happen on this other, even wider ranging matter.

[Caroline Lucas]

I am pleased to see the change on animal sentience, but to correct the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), the debate a few weeks ago was about whether we needed new legislation to provide for animal sentience when we left the EU. The Minister stood at the Dispatch Box and said that we did not need new legislation as it was already covered by existing UK domestic legislation. So I am pleased to see a screeching U-turn, but let us not pretend that it was not a screeching U-turn.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I have steadfastly resisted for 21 years engaging in meaningless partisan debate, and I am not going to abandon a career’s worth of effort in that direction to answer that point. Animal sentience is built into English law in various ways already, but the new Bill will vastly strengthen the position compared with what it is today under European law. That is a huge advance for our nation, one that many people on both sides of the House can be happy with. As my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park was pointing out, there is an exact parallel with what we and the Government are seeking to do in relation to environmental regulation. I really believe that if we could lay aside both the inevitable divisions about Brexit itself and the inevitable play of party politics, and simply focus on what is going to do the best thing for our environment, we would see that the programme we have before us is a huge advance and one we should gratefully welcome.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

I rise to speak to the provisions in my name, and particularly to new clause 27, which I hope to press to a vote later this evening. I apologise to Members for being absent from the debate for a couple of hours while I was in a Committee.

New clause 27 aims to preserve the high level of environmental protection that comes with membership of the EU. As we have discussed tonight, there is a very real risk that Brexit will create a big gap when it comes to the enforcement, in particular, of environmental law and standards in this country. The European Commission’s monitoring of member states’ action to implement and comply with EU law, backed up by the European Court of Justice’s ability to impose effective financial sanctions, have been an absolutely vital driver in pressing for and delivering environmental improvements in the UK. The example of clean air in London is just one case study that makes that point. In the absence of an effective domestic enforcement regime replicating the vital roles and functions currently performed by the Commission and the ECJ, it is difficult to see how the Government can deliver on their manifesto pledge to leave the environment in a better state than they found it.

On day 2 of the Committee, on 15 November, we had a good debate on the case for fully transposing the EU environmental principles into UK law. The debate was ultimately fruitless in terms of amending the Bill, but we heard a great deal from both sides of the Chamber about the importance of the EU environmental principles to the future protection of the environment in this country.

Perhaps most significantly, environmentalists such as myself were encouraged by a rather remarkable double act, with nods and comedic timing, of the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) and the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. From that, we learned a little more about the Secretary of State’s plan, first announced on 12 November, to consult on a new independent statutory body to

“advise and challenge government and potentially other public bodies on environmental legislation…stepping in when needed to hold these bodies to account and enforce standards.”

More to the point, we were led to believe that the Secretary of State now intends to introduce an environmental protection Bill to establish an environmental protection body with prosecutorial powers and independence from Government that is charged with policing and enforcing a national policy statement incorporating the EU environmental principles.

That amounts to a welcome recognition on the part of the Secretary of State of the risk of an ever-widening governance gap on environmental protection after the UK leaves the EU if there is not a domestic enforcement regime. Taken at face value, it also seems to be an acknowledgment that the new environmental protection body must be absolutely independent of Government; must be prosecutorial and investigatory so that it can hold the Government and other public bodies to account, including through the courts if necessary; and must be robust and durable so that it cannot easily be abolished or have its functions eroded by stealth.

However, what we still do not know is whether this is a concrete plan that will soon be put into practice so as to ensure the protection of environmental standards in the UK from March 2019, or something that the Secretary of State alone ruminates about while in the bath.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

rose—

[Caroline Lucas]

I am sorry—I love having discussions with the right hon. Gentleman, but I am aware that other people want to speak.

I will come straight to the point. My case is that the right hon. Gentleman wants me to have enough faith in the Secretary of State and in the capacity of this Government to get through a whole new piece of legislation in time. The crux of this debate is whether the rest of the House is prepared to go along with the confidence the right hon. Gentleman demonstrates, or whether we want to have a belt-and-braces approach.

The right hon. Gentleman said earlier that the idea of putting something in the Bill was inelegant. It may well be inelegant, but it is also a belt-and-braces way of making sure that, come the day we leave the EU—if indeed we do—we have all this legislation in an enforceable form on our statute book. If the Government are already saying, “Of course we’re going to do it—why worry?” why would they be so afraid of putting this into the Bill too? I appreciate that it is not elegant, but I would rather be inelegant and effective than elegant and ineffective.

That is why I want to press new clause 27 to a vote. It is a belt-and-braces way of ensuring with absolute certainty that when EU laws are brought into UK law they are properly enforceable and can be properly implemented. I had more to say, but to be fair to others, I will end now.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Oliver Letwin

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 15th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. The role of the ECJ in applying fines has concentrated the minds of policy makers in the UK. It was only the threat of significant fines that led to the air being cleaned up in places such as London. One of the many things that worry me about the Brexit process is that, even in what the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said about closing the so-called governance gap, I have not heard any proposal from him for real sanctions to concentrate the minds of policy makers on bringing their laws into conformity.

In EU law, the environmental principles are forward looking and play a formative role in guiding not just day-to-day decisions, but future policy development. That role could be lost under the Bill as drafted. In the months and years ahead, the principles of environmental law should be applied to UK decision making in a number of high-risk areas, such as trade policy, chemicals, and infrastructure planning, but unless the Bill is amended, the legal force of the environmental principles to guide future policy and decision making will be lost.

I want to end with a few words about national policy statements. The Government have suggested several times that instead of enshrining the principles in UK law, they might instead consider using the NPS route. I have real concerns about that because an NPS is not a fixed, long-term commitment, and does not provide the long-term certainty of primary legislation. Such an approach would represent a serious step backwards from the current position.

The statutory framework for establishing an NPS limits its scope to planning matters, so we would need a new statutory instrument to have a much broader scope. Also, an NPS lacks the binding character of legislation. Courts could give little or no weight at all to policy statements so, essentially, the basic problem with an NPS is that a Secretary of State has a great deal of control over it, unlike with primary legislation. In a case in which a non-governmental organisation or an individual wanted to use an NPS to hold the Government and public bodies to account, there could be a serious temptation for the Government to amend the NPS precisely to make it less effective at holding them to account.

I want briefly to express my support for amendments 93 to 95, which the hon. Member for Bristol East will no doubt speak to. Those amendments speak to the primary intention of the Bill as expressed by Ministers. Without them, it could not be said that the same rules and laws will apply on the day after exit as on the day before, as the Prime Minister has pledged. They are needed to ensure that our laws and our rights, and indeed the intent and purpose behind them, remain the same immediately after withdrawal from the EU. Any changes to those laws and rights, other than to ensure the faithful conversion of EU law into domestic law, should be made following our exit from the EU only through primary legislation, not by any other means. Those amendments therefore ask, in a sense, little of Ministers, and so, as with new clauses 30 and 60, I hope that the Minister will respond positively to them.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I have a large degree of agreement and sympathy with what the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) has just said. So far as animal sentience is concerned, I suspect we may find that there is more on that already in UK law than she is allowing, but I wait to hear from the Government about that. However, I do agree that, one way or another, we need it to be present in UK law at the end of this, and I think the Secretary of State is probably pretty convinced of the same thing.

I want mainly to talk about the question of new clauses 60 and 67, or more precisely what they are aiming at and how best to achieve it, because the point at which I disagree with the hon. Lady is not one of ends but one of means. It is a rare thing to happen in the House of Commons, but I hope I might at least half-persuade her by the end of my remarks that it would be better for her to adopt a different view of the mechanics than she is suggesting.

Let me begin with this: I agree with the hon. Lady wholeheartedly that, in the light of schedule 1, we cannot possibly rely on clause 6—even as I hope it will subsequently be adjusted—and still less on clauses 2 and 3 to do the heavy lifting that she rightly wants to get the precautionary principle and other critical principles into UK law. She is absolutely right about that.

The question that the hon. Lady and I are both asking is, how best can we get over that problem and get to the position where the UK courts and the UK Administration as a whole—the Government and their agencies—carry on applying those principles in a sensible and serious way to our environmental protection over succeeding decades? This is obviously a matter not just of a minute or a day or a year, but of a long period over which we want a settled, continued policy being carried on by succeeding UK Governments of different persuasions.

If that is the question, clearly one route would be some variant of new clause 60, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), or new clause 67 or some other variant. I completely admit that that is a route, but I want first to explain why I do not think it is an optimal route and then to explain why what has been talked about by the Secretary of State is a better route.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

And his mind is one that is capable of grasping these matters, if ever the mind of a Member of the House of Commons was. The first point, then, is that a proper statutory basis is superior to a specific amendment to the Bill.

[Caroline Lucas]

Why does the right hon. Gentleman think that the two are mutually exclusive? Why could we not have the security of knowing that we have a provision in the Bill? We are delighted with the new Secretary of State, but how long will he stay? Who knows? Who might come next? We want the certainty of the Bill now, as well as the nice hope of the environment Act that so many of us have been requesting for such a long time.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

First, I am confident that this Secretary of State will be here for rather longer than some other Secretaries of State have been recently. I welcome that, because I think he is a very, very fine Environment Secretary. Secondly, I am not saying that it is inconceivable that there could be two pieces of legislation, but I think it rather inelegant to legislate in a slightly awkward way, and then to repeal that legislation in a Bill that would probably start its passage before the passage of this Bill has been completed. I would prefer it to be done properly, although opinions may differ.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

What gives me the confidence is that I think it is perfectly doable, and I think the Secretary of State intends to do it. I am in a slightly odd position—the Secretary of State has to nod each time I say these things, because I cannot speak for him—but I assure the hon. Lady that I really am very confident about that. Let us proceed for a moment, however, on the assumption that that is indeed going to happen. That gives us a place in which to do things, although of course it does not solve all the problems.

My second point is that, unlike the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion, I think that a national policy statement is an ideal vehicle for the translation of these principles into something much more solid and much more determinate. A national policy statement is not just something that a Minister dreams up and issues like a piece of confetti. It comes before the House of Commons and is subject to resolution by the House of Commons, and it is therefore debated. It is exposed in draft, and it is discussed by the green groups.

There will of course be considerable debate about the exact terms of a national policy statement that seeks to turn those principles into something much more concrete, but I think there is ample scope for turning it into something of which we could be really proud. It would also have a huge advantage over mere principles when the courts came to judge the actions of the state and measure them against it—for that is exactly what would happen. A national policy statement is a policy statement by Ministers. If Ministers do not follow that policy, they are, by hypothesis, acting irrationally and in a Wednesbury unreasonable way, and can therefore be judicially reviewed. When they are judicially reviewed, the courts will look at the policy statement and compare it with their actions. If the policy statement is properly debated, properly exposed and properly expressed, those actions can be measured against it in a very determinate and careful way, and we can end up with a much more solid environmental protection than we would ever have got out of the principles.

[Caroline Lucas]

The idea that judicial review will be an adequate recourse is misguided. Judicial review is about only the process, not the outcome. Moreover, it is becoming harder and harder for people to obtain the necessary funds: plenty of people would not know how to begin to do it. I also do not share the right hon. Gentleman’s confidence about the way in which a court will necessarily regard a national policy statement. An NPS does not have the same quality of judiciability as primary legislation.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Perhaps we will not reach agreement about this. I disagree with every part of what the hon. Lady has just said. First, judicial review has been a highly successful mechanism for environmental campaigners. It is, in fact, from judicial review that the clean air measures have arisen. Secondly, the reason why it is particularly effective in the case of a national policy statement is that a policy statement is a policy statement by Ministers and therefore creates a presumption of Wednesbury unreasonableness if it is departed from, so it is very easy to use as a tool for judicial review. Thirdly, judicial review is the mechanism that the principles in the new clause of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion, or the Opposition new clause or the new clause of the hon. Member for Wakefield, would have to operate on. It is not the case that the courts in our country would simply take a set of principles and apply them to some set of cases. They would not know what to do with them. The Government would have to be judicially reviewed for failing to apply those principles in their policy.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I will give way in a moment.

It is much better to be in a position where we can take the Government to judicial review for failing to apply a much more detailed set of policies, which are the Government’s policies, as approved in the House of Commons by resolution, and which have been fully debated and where we then know whether the court is likely to find that the action is or is not in accordance.

[Caroline Lucas]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

The Secretary of State is again nodding. That is why we have agreed that it is necessary under that same statute to create a body which is a prosecutorial authority, wholly independent of Government, along the lines of the Victims’ Commissioner, the Children’s Commissioner, the Office for Budget Responsibility, or the Equality and Human Rights Commission—we can choose which model—and which is an entity that is small and lean but, like the Committee on Climate Change, very serious. It would be established under statute, and charged with a duty under statute to ensure that the NPS is observed. I advocated the CCC when I was first working with Tony Juniper to get what became the Climate Change Act accepted in this House, and at an early stage I came to believe that the combination of clarity of objective and a body wholly independent and staffed by serious experts was a powerful mechanism, and so I think it has proved to be.

[Caroline Lucas]

I am interested in what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. Is he proposing that the body he is describing would have the same power of sanction that currently—as we have been talking about—the ECJ has, in the ability to fine Governments, which is what finally made them conform to the air quality laws, for example? Will this body have the capacity to do something as strong as fining Government to make sure they put their house in order?

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Oliver Letwin

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Government Policy (Mr Oliver Letwin)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I start by thanking all those responsible for bringing the Bill in good order through Committee, in particular my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General, my right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons, and all those who participated. I specifically acknowledge the role played by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), who helped to draft the amendment on BBC licensing, and by my hon. Friends the Members for Stone (Sir William Cash) and for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), who helped enormously with the section on the Defamation Act 2013.

Before saying a few words about the Bill, I will say something that I know the Solicitor-General would have liked to say at the end of Report, before he was timed out. I see the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) is in his place, and he will know that the Queen’s Speech outlined the steps we will take to deal with zero-carbon homes and establish allowable solutions. We are aware that within that framework, the decision on the commencement date for amendments to the Planning and Energy Act 2008, which restrict the ability of local authorities to impose their own special requirements, must be made in such a way that the ending of those abilities to set special requirements knits properly with the start of the operation of standards for zero-carbon homes and allowable solutions. I hope that will make the hon. Gentleman—and, indeed, my hon. Friends who are concerned about the same question of timing—rest easy.

The Bill goes to the House of Lords in a condition which, despite the splendid rhetoric from those on the Opposition Front Bench, is similar to that in which it entered this House. There have been significant discussions in Committee and on Report—some things have been added, some things changed, and some dropped—but broadly the Bill goes as it came, and does what it set out to do, which, as I explained on Second Reading, is not in any way to substitute for the enormous amount of work that has been going on across Government for the past three or four years to lessen the burden of regulation by removing regulations from the statute book, improving regulations, changing guidance, and reducing the complexity of bureaucracy that surrounds guidance, orders, codes of practice and so on. Nevertheless, this Bill makes a contribution to that process and helps in a significant way to reduce costs. I remind the House of some few items in the Bill that are of great significance.

[Caroline Lucas]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, but does he not accept that a Bill that is so ideologically based—it is essentially evidence-free, simply saying that all regulation is bad and that the free market is always good—does not do justice to protecting people or the environment?

[Mr Letwin]

The hon. Lady makes an odd point, in the sense that if the purpose of the Bill were to suggest that all regulation were bad, it would have a much wider scope than it does. There will remain after this Bill many thousands of pages of regulation, much of which is well intentioned and well aimed. Our contention remains that there is, alas, a certain amount of regulation that is burdensome, bureaucratic and sometimes counter-productive and that often has adverse effects on growth and—this matters very much to the hon. Lady—the ability of our country to satisfy social and environmental concerns.

I draw the House’s attention briefly to measures such as clause 1, which gives self-employed people the ability not to be governed by health and safety at work laws under most circumstances; the sensible measures on taxi and private hire vehicles, which were widely welcomed by those around the country who are being unnecessarily constrained; the significant changes being made to alcohol and entertainment licensing; and the considerable advances on poisons that have just been made on Report.

I want to end with a word on poisons. A part of my personal journey in the red tape challenge began when I discovered that in this country we operated a system—this is germane to the hon. Lady’s point—whereby someone would pay a small fee and send a piece of paper to an office; there the paper was stamped, which cost the taxpayer a certain amount; it was then sent back and the person was allowed to sell all sorts of very poisonous substances. However, people had to send the same piece of paper and the same fee if they wanted to sell things such as household bleach. It was an entirely purposeless exercise, which had gone on for years and years. It neither served the purpose that we wish it to serve—that of regulating properly the sale of extremely dangerous substances—

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Oliver Letwin

Monday 3rd February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

That is a clear example of where the status quo is not causing a problem. The Government are looking for problems to solve where there are no problems, and instead are creating a whole lot more.

Affordable housing could be another casualty of this obsession with deregulation. Reducing the eligibility period for the right to buy could seriously undermine housing associations’ ability to provide affordable housing and make it more, not less, difficult for housing associations to do business, contrary to the Government’s own apparent aims. It would be interesting to hear what assessment the Minister has made of the impact on the Government’s ambition to deliver 165,000 affordable homes over the Parliament. Why did they not consult housing associations on the impact of the measure before bringing it forward?

On the environment, in May 2010 in the coalition agreement, the Government committed to encouraging community-owned renewable energy schemes, and that is being delivered with the launch of the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s community energy strategy. However, the reduction of energy and climate change duties, set out in clause 28, appears specifically to contradict that commitment and undermine the recent statements supporting community energy made by Ministers.

On public participation in decision making, the Bill weakens the Government’s overall consultation duties by removing specified statutory duties to consult. The majority of the consultation requirements to be removed by the Bill relate to the environment and greatly reduce the participation rights of affected people, including regulators such as Natural England. Consultation is a core element of democratic government and serves as one of the main ways the Government can be held to account for their actions. It also contributes to increasing public trust in government and is essential for developing policy and legislation, because it provides access to wider sources of information, opinions, and potential issues and solutions. The Government risk undermining their legitimacy and triggering a public outcry by removing statutory consultation requirements. The statement in schedule 15 that the Government consider these statutory requirements to consult as unnecessary is neither satisfactory nor sufficient to justify that removal.

More specifically, the UK is a signatory to the Aarhus convention, which binds the UK to provide the public with, among other things, a right to participate in decision making in any proposed activity that might have a significant effect on the environment and/or during the preparation of plans and programmes relating to the environment. The removal of the requirement to consult on the exercise of various powers relating to the environment directly conflicts with the requirements of the Aarhus convention, which stems from principle 10 of the Rio declaration, which opens with the declaration:

“Environmental issues are best handled with participation of all concerned citizens, at the relevant level.”

The Government should justify the removal of each of the consultation requirements and confirm how the UK’s public participation obligation, pursuant to the convention, will be discharged.

We have already heard quite a bit about clause 47. I was going to say that hidden in the Bill was a provision seeking to repeal some of the journalistic protections in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 that currently ensure proper and fair judicial scrutiny before police applications to obtain journalistic material are granted. I am grateful for the fact that the Minister is attempting to reassure his own Back Benchers on this issue, but it worries me that only at the last moment, when the Bill has got to this stage, is he proposing further consultation on this important part of the Bill. That strikes me as odd, as many organisations have been extremely vocal in raising this issue over several months. The Newspaper Society, The Guardian and many others have warned about the impact of closed material proceedings and so on.

I am grateful that, at the last minute, the Government are looking again at this matter and saying they will consult again, but that raises questions about how many other parts of the Bill will have unintended consequences.

[Mr Letwin]

The hon. Lady is making a serious speech; I hope I can correct just one misapprehension on her part. Although it is perfectly true that the Newspaper Society and others raised this issue, from memory it was on Wednesday or Thursday last week. They had not done so when the Joint Committee was scrutinising the Bill, nor did they do so when the Bill left the Joint Committee and we responded to it; they did so only last Wednesday or Thursday. That is why I have said that some further consultation would make sense, in case anyone else out there has views who has not come forward during the whole six months or so of exposure of the draft.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the Minister for that clarification. That is not as I understood it, but I am pleased to be corrected if that is the case. Certainly the lobby that I have been aware of—which is perhaps looking at broader issues than the question we are currently discussing—has been going on for a long time, but I thank the Minister for his clarification.

My second main objection to the Bill is that, in a sense, it just feels like the latest manifestation of a Government embarking on an evidence-free deregulatory path without due consideration of warnings, including from business. Those warnings say that effective regulation is essential to create jobs and innovation, and that ripping up vital green legislation risks locking the UK into polluting industrial processes for decades to come, jeopardising future competitiveness, damaging the UK’s attractiveness for green investment and undermining new industries. Let us take, for example, the UK Green Building Council, which works daily with more than 400 companies and organisations, from the largest to the smallest, across the built environment industry. In response to the Prime Minister’s comment last week about deregulation, Paul King, its chief executive, said:

“The Prime Minister’s boasts of ‘slashing 80,000 pages’ of environmental guidance is utterly reprehensible. It is the same poisonous political rhetoric from Number 10, devaluing environmental regulation in a slash and burn manner. These words are not only damaging and irresponsible, but misrepresent the wishes of so many modern businesses, both large and small.”