Deregulation Bill

Joan Walley Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

Having sat on the Joint Committee on the draft Deregulation Bill, the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) has far more experience than me. The Bill proposes the abolition of many regulations, and it is important that the House should take a close look at all the evidence given to the Committee.

My stance is that sound regulation is essential for a well-functioning market economy, and that deregulation also has a place in those arrangements. I have no time for dinosaur-like regulations that have finished doing their job. For example, I am happy to see that clause 9 will get rid of regulations relating to the sale of knitting yarn. There are many more detailed regulations that should no longer be on the statute book, because they are not helping business or providing the level playing field that it needs. I do not want to see costly or unnecessary burdens on businesses. It is in all our interests to have regulations that are fit for purpose, that are properly enforced and that are properly understood by the general public and by those responsible for complying with them.

We also have to recognise, however, that regulation can be for the public good. The Bill contains a great deal of detail that needs to be understood. The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health has raised the matter of clause 8 with me, pointing out that if a consolidated list of authorised fuels is to be published, those fuels need to be registered under their original names rather than their brand names. That is one example of the detailed points that need to be examined, and I have no objection to that happening.

Many regulations have come about as a result of lengthy campaigns to get them on to the statute book, often by people who have been involved in some kind of dreadful catastrophe. Those people simply wanted to prevent what happened to them or their loved ones from happening to anyone else. Those regulations can involve important aspects of health and safety and of well-being. Clause 26 deals with the removal of the duty to order the re-hearing of marine accident investigations. The Government are proposing that the Secretary of State should simply have a discretionary power in this regard. They might think that that will be sufficient, but I ask them to consider the case of the MV Derbyshire. We should not forget how many years of campaigning it took for the hearing of that case to be reopened. We need to be careful before we press the delete button for certain regulations; we need to be very clear about what we are doing.

We need a coherent, long-term approach to regulation —in which some deregulation has a place—as a tool to frame policy that is consistent with our international commitments, but this Bill has insufficient regard to the Government’s avowed intention to be the “greenest Government ever”. The Cabinet Office is meant to be the all-knowing, all-seeing hub of joined-up, cross-cutting government, but there is no sense that it used an informed, evidence-based approach in building this latest bonfire of red tape. I say that with particular reference to the proposals for a duty to achieve economic growth.

My biggest objection to the Bill is the duty to achieve economic growth as set out in clauses 61 to 64. I was interested to hear what the Minister for Government Policy said earlier about that. He did not give the House any clear examples of any environmental appraisals that had taken place during the drafting of the Bill. The clauses appear to be a blatant attack on sustainable development, and they have nothing to do with deregulation. They are about something completely different.

I find it extraordinary that little weight has been given to the evidence that the Wildlife and Countryside Link group, and others, gave to the Joint Committee on which the hon. Member for Witham served. Insufficient regard seems to have been given to environmental appraisal throughout the clauses, and I wonder how the Government can square clause 61 with guidance from their own Natural Capital Committee. Did the Joint Committee take any evidence on that?

At the very least, an amendment should be tabled to the effect that the person exercising a regulatory function should consider the depreciation of natural and other forms of capital. The Bill should also replace the duty to achieve economic growth with a duty to achieve sustainable development. I am conscious of the fact that, when the Government got rid of the Sustainable Development Commission, they appointed the Cabinet Office as the hub for all the different green initiatives and charged it with responsibility for all those policies. I cannot see where that sits in relation to the Bill.

The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), who is also a Minister in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, told the Joint Committee:

“I want to stick to growth, pure and simple”.

Sustainable development is seen by the Government as a drag on growth and a regulatory burden. In the light of that analysis, I appreciate that anyone advocating the retention of an overall sustainable development duty by the Government could be regarded as persona non grata, but I want to explain why retaining such a duty is not a retrograde step and should be included in the Bill.

This nation signed up to Rio and to Agenda 21. After last year’s Rio conference on sustainable development, it signed up to the Rio principles. Indeed, our own Prime Minister is responsible for implementing the millennium development goals in a way that incorporates the sustainable development goals. That is an international commitment, and it was made in the cause of the betterment of future generations. It is universal and should be retained by any UK Government, and I believe that it should be referred to in the Bill.

Sustainable development is not an impediment to growth. It is an expression of a much richer and deeper growth; an affirmation of well-being, of social justice and of living within planetary guidelines for the sake of our children and their children. It is in line with powerful and persuasive advocates of placing human betterment and ecological resilience at the core of our human values and endeavours.

Despite what the coalition Government say, they cannot advocate sustainable development if they go ahead with pure economic growth without any reference to it. Sustainable development is a force for good, proclaiming values and outcomes for which people yearn. It reminds us of our place alongside nature so that we cannot inadvertently step on nature’s toes in the pursuit of immediate growth, leading to longer-term, costly and possibly irreparable ecological degradation.

A sustainable development duty would give light to such considerations. It would require us to consider the longer-term implications, for our offspring and for the effective nurturing of our planet, of what we are doing in the name of growth. There is no incompatibility between sensible and reliable growth and sustainable growth. Integration should be recognised as it encompasses social betterment as well as a sound ecological basis for all future growth.

I have two other points to make outside of clauses 61 and 65. The Bill proposes to remove the commitment to promote sustainable communities from general local government responsibilities and to reduce the requirement to consult generally over local government initiatives. We have already heard from the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) about the importance of consultation and the links with the Aarhus convention. The measure could lead to any proposal from local government being about only economic growth, ignoring environmental and social considerations. We agree to that at our peril, and I hope that it will be examined closely in Committee. The misfit in relation to sustainable development also appears in the proposal to lower or even to remove any obligation on local governments to cut down on carbon-based energy use and to reduce or to remove the scope of micro-generation. Those are valuable planks in the shoring up of the low-carbon future for local living, striking at the heart of the recent advice of the Committee on Climate Change.

The Environmental Audit Committee, in its report on carbon budgets, found that the Government’s voluntary approach to securing local emissions reductions was insufficient. We recommended that local authorities should set emissions reductions targets with progress reports to Ministers each year. Not surprisingly, the Government disagreed with that, but they did commission the Committee on Climate Change to provide advice. The CCC’s advice was to strengthen incentives for local authorities to act. It recommended that a statutory duty be placed on them to draw up low-carbon plans to include a high level of ambition for emissions reductions and increased funding to go with it. That advice has not been recognised.

In conclusion, the Government should reconsider their position on sustainable development in Committee. They should consider how, as it currently stands, the Bill will undermine regulators such as Natural England, and they should think again about how local councils can be supported to build sustainable commitments and reduce carbon emissions. I will leave it at that as my voice is just about to give way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Lazarowicz]

The Minister makes a constructive point and perhaps it can be pursued and tightened up in Committee. My concern is that the real purpose of the clause is to say that economic objectives should trump other objectives and that they should take precedence over sustainable development objectives and, as my hon. Friend the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee has said, health and safety objectives and, indeed, equality objectives. The proposal is also of concern to other Members and is at variance with our cross-party commitments to prioritise sustainable development and recognise the requirement of public bodies—this had cross-party agreement just a few months ago—to have an equality duty.

[Joan Walley]

Will my hon. Friend tempt the Minister to respond to him again to put the whole issue of sustainable development on the record? If there was a duty for sustainable development, that would balance the economic, the social and the environmental, and there would be no need for the new duty for economic growth.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and if the Minister wishes to intervene to clarify the issue, I am happy to let him do so.