Deregulation Bill

Debate between Mark Prisk and Oliver Letwin

Monday 3rd February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

I certainly do not want to venture on to the particular terrain where my hon. Friend tempts me, but I shall say that in the whole process of looking at 6,000 regulations and a welter of statutory guidance, one of the things we have done is precisely to draw ideas and information from wide sources throughout the country. This has not been a top-down process involving a small group of bureaucrats. I think I am right in saying that about 30,000 responses have been received following our various online efforts to crowd-source ideas, and in every single case—we have done this subject by subject—we have asked panels of real, live business people, “What really matters to you?”

What we are bringing forward as part of the red tape challenge process, of which the Bill is one small fraction, is not a set of changes that have been dreamed up by some bureaucrat or even some elected Minister, but an approach that is based on the advice of those most affected. I think that is the right way of going about it and, incidentally, it is why, across the 3,000 or so regulations that are being got rid of or improved, we have managed to achieve a little more than £800 million a year of savings for British business. I do not think that that is by any means the limit of what we can achieve, but it is already a significant achievement.

[Mr Mark Prisk (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)]

The Bill is about cultural change compared with what we saw under the previous Government, when there was the equivalent of six new regulations every working day. The growth duty in clause 61 is an important principle. May I ask the Minister and his colleagues to include on their list of bodies subject to that duty the Valuation Office Agency, whose decisions on business rates for many local businesses are often disproportionate and have driven certain businesses in my constituency to the wall?

[Mr Letwin]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his part—which was signal and tremendously important—in advancing this whole agenda in the early years of this Government. As it happens, I have with me the preliminary list of the non-economic regulators that will be within the scope of the growth duty, and I notice that the Valuation Office Agency is not on it. I shall therefore take full account of his recommendations and discuss with colleagues, and with him, the possibility of including it.