Oliver Letwin
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(10 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister for Government Policy (Mr Oliver Letwin)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I will begin by saying something that several in the House might find mildly surprising in the context of this debate: regulation is often sensible and necessary. It is no part of the Government’s plans or our view of life to suggest that regulation is never useful. Indeed, like previous Governments, this Government are presiding over an immense amount of regulation, much of which is constructive and helpful. Nevertheless, it remains true that what we inherited in 2010 was not just a rational set of regulations that anybody who looked at them carefully would have sponsored. There were all sorts of regulations that, frankly, made no sense at all. What we set out to do in 2010 was to review the entire regulatory scene. We have put in an enormous amount of effort, and I am immensely grateful to those in the civil service and outside who have helped us.
As we have gone through regulation after regulation, we have in many instances discovered that there are things being regulated that no longer exist. There are regulators doing things that no longer have any useful purpose, and bodies that are provided for in regulations that no longer function. We have also found that there are things being regulated that do exist, and for which regulations are still operative, but on which such regulation ought not to exist. I suspect that dealing with such matters would be uncontroversial among hon. Members, and I shall give the House two minor, slightly amusing, examples.
On inspection, it turned out that every time the Mayor of London or a borough of London wanted to set up a statue to any grand figure of our past, they had to seek, under a regulation, the specific approval of the Secretary of State. That is clearly completely mad, so I am glad to say that the Bill will remove that particular amusement. A second example—it is a particular favourite of mine, as it has taken a very long time to get this changed—is that until we manage to get the Bill enacted so that clause 40 becomes law, I regret to tell the House that it remains the case that it is an offence to sell liqueur chocolates to under 16s. I can sort of see why someone had the crazy idea to legislate for that at some point, but it does not make any sense, so we are getting rid of it.
Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is starting to outline a delicious smorgasbord of deregulation. I am particularly pleased about the clauses that will cut red tape for business. When the Departments looked at everything that could be deregulated, were there examples that they wanted to include in the Bill, but could not because they are overridden by EU legislation?
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—
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
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.
David Rutley
The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) likes mountains, so I think that that might be the way to get this concept through to him. We are talking about mountains of red tape in Europe. I remind Members that 70% of the cost of regulation on UK businesses comes from EU regulations. The list the Minister refers to is more than 8,000 metres high—it is the Everest of regulation—and it needs to be combated urgently which is, I think, what he is trying to do.
Mr Letwin
My hon. Friend is quite right. Leaving aside the badinage induced by Opposition Members, the serious point is that even before the renegotiation, the Government have made an extremely serious attempt at deregulation in the EU, working with British business to identify the most important things—I will send a list of them to the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), too, because I doubt he has taken the trouble to read what has already been widely published—but that is an arduous undertaking. By contrast, the Bill deals with those things that we can manage under our control in this House, and we should do so right away.
Steve Baker
I welcome the Bill and reassure my right hon. Friend that I would be surprised if history remembered this Government as radically liberal. Before he goes too much further into the detail, however, will he reassure me that he has considered, or that he will consider, sunset clauses for all new regulations?
Mr Letwin
I have good news for my hon. Friend: it is not a matter of considering it; we have done it. Every single new regulation we have brought in—incidentally, their number is limited by our one in, two out principle, which means they are slightly more than twice balanced by things that we have removed from the statute book—contains a sunset provision. We took that step right at the beginning of our taking office, and the purpose is to ensure that people do not mindlessly roll out the same regulations long after they have passed their sell-by date.
If I may, I want to return to the Bill—for a moment at least. To set the scene, the Bill is just one small part of the process. The red tape challenge looked at about 6,000 regulations. The one in, two out constraint holds back the stream, while the red tape challenge removes water from the lake behind the dam. In addition, and just as importantly, we have spent an enormous amount of time and energy focusing on enforcement, because it is not just a matter of what regulations or indeed statutory guidance are in place, but a matter of how things are enforced. We have been taking considerable steps to ensure that the agencies responsible for regulation enforce in a way that is much more conscious of the needs of our businesses.
In that context, clause 61, which is probably the single most important clause in the Bill, creates a growth duty—[Interruption.] Do look it up, please; it is useful for Opposition Members to know about a Bill when they are about to launch an attack on it. The clause requires our non-economic regulators, every time they make a decision, to spend time and energy considering whether that decision takes proper account of the need for economic growth. That is not to say that that consideration should overrule all regulators’ duties, but we are trying to create a sense of proportionality and to ensure that our regulators consider effects on growth as they go about their duties.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
That is an excellent idea. I welcome the clause, but is it not the case that now that the EU regulates comprehensively in areas such as the environment and business, we do not need domestic regulation on top, but just the UK consequences of EU rules?
Mr Letwin
In many instances there is a good case for not layering further domestic obligations on top of international or EU obligations. My right hon. Friend has a pretty long and distinguished record of involvement in this area, so let me give him an example from the Bill. Clause 59 provides for “ambulatory references” in international maritime regulation. We took the approach that the law of the sea is basically formed by international agreements, and that there is every reason for our regulation not to add to that, nor even to qualify or interpret it, but rather simply to refer to it so that every shipping company and captain of a vessel knows that it is the international agreements that apply to them. That has the advantage that we can be sure that our regulation is aligned with international regulation, which tends to induce shipping to come to this country, and it also simplifies the statute book. That is the kind of shift that we are trying to achieve in many domains.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
My right hon. Friend seems to be making an excellent case for ending the gold-plating of regulation, although I am a little distressed that the Wreck Removal Convention Act 2011, which I promoted as a private Member’s Bill, will be redundant if this Bill deals with maritime matters. Will he go further and say whether there will be opportunities for Members on both sides of the House to suggest additional measures to be repealed and matters to be deregulated under the Bill, including Acts that received Royal Assent but never came into force, such as the Easter Act 1928?
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.
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
My right hon. Friend said that the Bill’s provisions were being introduced on the advice of those who were most affected by the regulations, but he will be aware of the concern that has been expressed by a wide range of media and broadcasting organisations about the effect of clause 47 in removing important journalistic protections. Is there anything he can say to reassure them that it will not have the effect they fear?
Mr Letwin
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, the Chairman of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, for raising that issue, which is indeed important. It was a late entrant, in the sense that it was no part of the intention of clause 47 to have the effect that some of the media organisations are worried about. Those organisations have been worried that the clause would obviate the need for both parties to be in court when a court orders what is called a production order, which typically requires, for example, a bank to produce the accounts of a person accused of a particular malfeasance, where those accounts are relevant to the trial.
In the case that the media are concerned about, a production order would be used to ask a media organisation to produce some piece of information it holds. Those media organisations were worried that they would no longer have the guarantee of their day in court to contest such a production order, because the effect of clause 47 would be to replace the need for the existence of primary legislation governing inter partes rules with the criminal procedure rules committee. The media were afraid that the criminal procedure rules committee might in some way weaken the inter partes rules. I have good news for my hon. Friend and his Committee, and indeed for the media organisations—which, incidentally, I have offered to meet later in the week or next week. As it was no part of the intention of clause 47 to do that, we are now looking for ways specifically to exempt journalism and all such media items from the clause. If I may, I would like to discuss with him and his Committee the precise drafting of that change, so that we can be sure that the media organisations themselves and the Select Committee are content with the changes we make.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend says, the reason this problem arises is that criminal procedure rules are effectively being delegated to a subordinate body, not to this House. Unlike in most areas of the Bill, where I am absolutely behind the Government, this is an area where some of the rules are constitutionally quite important—we have just heard one example. There might be a number of other areas, which have not come up so quickly, where we would not want to undermine our constitutional protections, so will my right hon. Friend rethink clause 47?
Mr Letwin
My right hon. Friend, who obviously has an immensely distinguished record of concern for civil liberties—which he and I have both fought for in various ways over the years—is right to draw attention to the significance of clause 47. One of the things I have asked officials to look at today is the possibility of going out to a further consultation on clause 47, to see whether anyone else comes forward. In point of fact, because the draft Bill went through pre-legislative scrutiny—there was a Joint Committee of both Houses looking at it, and so on—it had a good airing. It is probable, therefore, that other people would have come forward already if they had concerns, but I do not want to take the risk. I think it would be sensible to have further consultation, to see whether we elicit any responses from others who might be concerned. If in the course of that my right hon. Friend discovers any other bodies that are concerned, or any groups of people who might or should be concerned, my door is open to him to have discussions about that.
I want to say one further thing about the background before coming to some of the other, most important clauses in the Bill. There is a strange state of affairs in our country, which is that although a great part of the regulation that governs us is either in directives and then UK legislation or in UK legislation, including statutory instruments as well as primary legislation, a great part of the regulation that de facto affects our businesses is not in any such place, but in the vast reams of statutory guidance.
These are enormous items. I certainly cannot claim to have read the totality of any major area of statutory guidance, because it would be impossible for one person to embark on such a task with any hope of success if that person was carrying out any serious set of ministerial duties. Some of those items of guidance are tens of thousands of pages long. We have therefore undertaken a massive programme of spring cleaning: for instance, we are hoping to achieve an 85% reduction in the sheer volume of health and safety guidance and legislation.
That does not, of course, necessarily equate to a reduction in the burden of the substance of the guidance. What it does is make it possible for people, for the first time, to be clear about what the wretched stuff is trying to do. My experience in dealing with this morass of over-verbose, under-specific and often extraordinarily badly phrased guidance is that the people who are responsible for enforcing it often do not really know what is in it. We are trying to reach a point at which we do know what is in it, and at that point we shall be able to judge whether it needs to be adjusted. That is another important part of our activity, which is not included in the Bill.
Let me now draw the House’s attention to a few of the most important clauses in the Bill, apart from clause 61, which I have already mentioned, clause 59, which I mentioned in response to an intervention from my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), and clause 47, which we have just been discussing. I shall begin with clause 1, which the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) will be able to find quite easily if he opens the Bill. It is on the first page.
Under clause 1, about two thirds of the people in the country who are self-employed will no longer be covered by the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, and will therefore not have to engage in a number of activities in which they are currently required to engage because they are covered by the Act. The one third who will continue to be so covered are those who engage in high-risk activities, which will be specified and which will be precisely the activities that the House would expect to be covered, such as the activities of the nuclear, construction and chemical industries. That is a major gain in itself.
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
My right hon. Friend said that the clause would affect self-employed people. Will it also affect people who work for themselves through their own limited companies? I understand why it will not apply to those with employees, but will the owner of a company who is both a director and an employer be classified as self-employed for the purpose of the clause?
Mr Letwin
That is a very interesting question, which will need to be discussed in Committee. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House, who will be leading the charge, will give it some thought. The clause is certainly intended to cover people who do not have employees, and I do not think that the example given by my hon. Friend involves employees. The intent is there, although I do not know whether we shall be able to find a way of fulfilling it without creating a loophole.
Clause 4 provides for a much simpler apprenticeship scheme. Straightforward agreements and standards will replace a morass of regulation, and employers will be able to secure simple tax rebates as a method of payment for their part in providing the apprenticeships. That is a major advance.
Clause 5 is a good illustration of the way in which the Bill can have positive social effects. At present, disabled driving instructors are in the absurd position of having to have special cars and having to undergo special tests, even when they do not have a disability that in any way affects their capacity to deal with emergencies or other driving problems. The Bill will create a sensible regime under which people will be forced to be tested only if there is reason to suppose that such a special test is necessary.
Clause 7 is another example of plain common sense at work. It removes a crazy situation whereby if gas is being unloaded at a port, and the port is perfectly well licensed for the purpose and contains plenty of people who are licensed to carry out their task, they are not permitted to permit individuals to do the unloading unless those individuals themselves have individual licences and permits. That too is an absurd situation, which the clause removes.
Clause 9 is one of my favourites because it has taken us about two and a half years to get to this. We would have thought it was fairly straightforward. It turned out not to be. This is about knitting yarn. I do not know whether there is anybody in the House who feels passionately that knitting yarn really should be sold only in quantities of grams—perhaps the movers of the amendment feel passionately about that. I personally do not share that passion. It seems to me that if someone wants to sell knitting yarn by quantity of knitting yarn, it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do and we are going to allow them to do it.
Clause 21, by contrast, is not a matter of common sense merely. It is a matter of great concern to very large numbers of our fellow citizens who would like to exercise the right to buy—a fine policy that this Government have been sponsoring and have made much easier in many ways. This clause reduces the period of qualification from five years to three years for right to buy, thereby much enlarging the group of people who can participate.
Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)
I notice that my right hon. Friend has scampered past clause 13, which touches on the issue of rights of way, particularly the ones that go very close, or even through, people’s houses. [Interruption.] I just wanted to ask him if we can have confidence that not only are people who like rambling and walking through the countryside going to be able to continue to do so, but people who have a problem with rights of way that intrude on their privacy—and which may have been created willy-nilly by a group of difficult people—will have a chance to fight back without being bankrupted by large organisations that they cannot afford to fight against? [Interruption.]
Mr Letwin
Yes, I can give my hon. Friend some comfort on that. Incidentally, it is rather interesting to hear Opposition Front Benchers chuntering away as if this is somehow a preoccupation of those who have large houses. Not at all. I do not know about my hon. Friend’s constituents, but I have a constituent who has quite a small house, who—[Interruption.] Actually, it is a perfectly ordinary house with a perfectly ordinary garden and it has a right of way going through it, and it is pretty miserable. I suspect Opposition Members have such constituents too who have very modest houses with very modest gardens, and if the Opposition knew the slightest thing about rural England they would know that.
The fact is that there has been a problem. We need to preserve the system of rights of way as that is an enormously important part of our countryside, but it has been difficult to make sensible adjustments because of the ground rules against which inspectors are making decisions. The stakeholders working group looked at this very intensively over a very long period and took a very balanced view. The upshot is clause 13 and the surrounding clauses, and I am delighted to say that I have agreed with my right hon. Friend the Environment Secretary that it should be accompanied by guidance that will specifically ask the inspectors to give real weight to the fact that a particular path goes through someone’s garden. That will help enormously to achieve a more sensible balance. That is now being looked at in detail by the SWG, which I hope will approve the new guidance in very short order.
Bill Wiggin
I am very grateful for what my right hon. Friend says about that because it can take up to 12 years in my constituency just to get a tiny little movement on such rights of way.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
Will that guidance also refer to the issue of green lanes which has come up among my constituents in north Yorkshire? I would be interested to know whether my right hon. Friend has been lobbied or representations have been made by those involved in that campaign.
Mr Letwin
Well, to say that I have been lobbied about these matters is mild understatement. I think it would be sensible for my hon. Friend and me to have a detailed discussion of clauses 14, 16 and 17. I will just mention clause 17 for a moment, which authorises the construction of gates on public ways. If my hon. Friend pauses to consider the materiality of that change, he will understand just how important this is.
Clause 29 is one of the favourites of the Communities Secretary. It decriminalises the penalties for misfeasance with household waste. It turns them into civil penalties rather than criminal penalties, which is long overdue.
Clause 33 is the result of lobbying by Members on both sides of the House. It will fulfil a commitment by the Chancellor by enabling child trust funds to be converted into junior ISAs. That is another excellent move.
Finally, clause 43 sums up the whole Bill, in my view. It deals with the exhibition of films in village halls. I am talking not about movies involving ghastly violence and huge amounts of sexual activity, which are classed as X-rated. As we can see from the clause, film certificates will continue to apply. At the moment, however, if someone wants to show a Charlie Chaplin film, they have to obtain a licence. That is astonishing, and there is not the slightest reason for it. I know that Opposition Members have no concern with village halls or village life, but perhaps they will recognise that this is also happening in community halls throughout the urban centres of our country. It would be nice if people could show films in those places without a licence, and I am glad to say that liberty will reign in this respect and that clause 43 will enable that to happen.
I hope that I have demonstrated that, while the Bill represents only a tiny fraction of this Government’s vast and enormously successful efforts to have a period of a Parliament for the first time in this country’s history in which we have reduced rather than increased the burden of domestic regulation, it is nevertheless a significant step forward. I am sure that it will be widely welcomed in all parts of the House, except among those on the far left who want to see this country being further and further regulated.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
Rarely have we debated a Bill that is so long and so broad and yet so ineffectual, given what it purportedly seeks to achieve. In true “Yes Minister” style, when faced with the important and necessary challenge of deregulation, the Government have decided to deal with the difficult bit in the Bill’s title and do very little about it in the text.
Mr Letwin
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, and I assure her that I shall not seek to intervene on her on a regular basis. If the task of deregulation is so necessary—a proposition I fully agree with—why were no such steps taken during the many years of the Labour Government?
Chi Onwurah
I find it hard to believe that the Minister has intervened to make a point for which he has so little evidence. During the last Labour Government, we deregulated to bring benefits to business of £3 billion a year. This Government’s record is in no way comparable with that.
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—
David Rutley
I will try to respond to that point before I hand over to the Minister. Surely the purpose of clause 1 is to ensure that those who are self-employed in industries in which there is no risk to the lives of others can get on with their work. I do not know the exact details regarding mountain guides, so I will hand over to the Minister, who I am sure will give a much better-informed answer.
Mr Letwin
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way because this is a beautiful illustration of the problem. Mountaineering, like many such activities, is covered by the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority, so those who are self-employed in that terrain are already regulated. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) illustrates beautifully the kind of problem that arises owing to multiple duplications of regulation. There are clear reasons why health and safety regulations apply in certain dangerous disciplines, but not when they are already regulated.
David Rutley
I thank the Minister for that reply. I am sure that the hon. Member—and friend—for Bassetlaw (John Mann) and I will enjoy further conversations about that subject outside the Chamber.
The Bill will help to provide further impetus for change in not only the UK, but Europe. Fortunately, there is increasing evidence that, in contrast to the abject failure of the French socialist approach under President Hollande, the UK’s plan A can only help to bolster the pragmatic supply-side reform movement that has been spurred on by the Government and by the Prime Minister’s business taskforce. It has already been embodied by Open Europe and the Fresh Start group, which I and other Government Members support. Indeed, I was honoured to help to host a round-table discussion on better regulation only last month with delegates from across the EU. The Bill will do a good deal to deregulate in the UK, but if we are also to increase the EU’s competitiveness, we need to spread the lessons of our approach across the European economy.
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.”
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
And so we move on from “Cash in the Attic”. I apologise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, as although I was present for the beginning of the Minister’s introductory statement, I had to leave the Chamber to attend a sitting of a statutory instrument Committee, which went on for a fair period of time. I was going to speak about the point raised by the National Union of Journalists about the security of sources, but I believe it has been said that that will be reviewed by the Government, so it is clear that I am more effective out of the Chamber than I am in it. I wholeheartedly support my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) in her expressions of concern about the overall nature of the Bill and how deregulation in a range of areas will impact on key policies to which the Government have signed up, but from which they now seem to be resiling, especially regarding environmental protection and tackling climate change.
Let me run through the clauses that will require further clarification as the Bill makes progress and express some of my concerns. Clause 23 removes restrictions on the provision of passenger rail services by amending the Transport Act 1968, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), and permits the passenger transport executives, or PTEs, to carry rail passengers. That is a major step forward in devolving regional rail franchises, but there is a lack of clarity about the consequences for PTEs. Will they remain as local economic regulators or will they be equipped with sufficient funds to provide rail passenger services? It would be useful to receive clarity from the Department for Transport about how it views the future role of PTEs, as the clause calls that role into question.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) talked about the removal under clause 26 of the duty to order a rehearing of a marine accident investigation. The Merchant Shipping Act 1995 placed a duty on the Secretary of State to reopen marine accident investigations in the light of new evidence, but that duty will be abolished. My hon. Friend spoke about the MV Derbyshire tragedy in 1980, which led to a campaign being waged by many people, including families and trade unions across the piece—the National Union of Seamen, as it was at the time, Nautilus and the International Transport Workers Federation. It was a significant victory when then Secretary of State exercised his power to enable an investigation of that case to take place. It would therefore be a real concern if that power were removed from the Secretary of State, because the function is legitimate—
Mr Letwin
Just to correct the hon. Gentleman, nobody is removing a power; what is being removed is a duty. The fact that the Secretary of State has the power to order such inquiries is absolutely fine; the problem is that he has a duty to do so even in a case when he and everybody else knows perfectly well that there is absolutely nothing we can do as a result of the new evidence. The simple existence of new evidence will force an inquiry that costs millions of pounds, and that is all that we are trying to end.
John McDonnell
I welcome that clarification, but it would be helpful and reassuring if there were guidance about how the power will be exercised in the future. There is a concern that removing the duty will mean that the power will not necessarily be exercised without our again having to mobilise long-winded campaigns.
John McDonnell
I find that extremely helpful. I chair the RMT parliamentary group, and it would be really useful in discussions with the Department for Transport about this matter if there was full consultation with the unions concerned—the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, and Nautilus International—as well as the UK Chamber of Shipping and others, and especially some of those groups that have campaigned on investigations over the years. It is important that we assure people that if there is an accident—we all hope that there is not—there will be a proper investigation.
Clause 59 deals with ambulatory references to international shipping instruments. It amends the Merchant Shipping Act 1995 to enable the Government to update international shipping conventions without having to introduce secondary legislation. The Joint Committee expressed concern that that will undermine and bypass full parliamentary scrutiny. For example, there is concern in the shipping industry—it has been expressed by the UK Chamber of Shipping, as well as the Nautilus UK and RMT unions—regarding the international convention for the prevention of pollution from ships, under which changes to the sulphur emissions regime in Europe are due to come into effect in January 2015, with progressive measures continuing to the end of the decade. It would be unfortunate if something that had a major impact on the shipping industry did not receive full parliamentary scrutiny, as might be the case under the new procedures.
I share concerns that have been expressed about the provisions on the exercise of regulatory functions, and I say that on behalf of many people who work in the transport sector. We are told that consultations will take place over the coming months on which bodies will be covered, particularly regarding the Office of Rail Regulation, which was not included in the original list of bodies. Bodies that are included in relation to transport include the Office of Rail Regulation, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and traffic commissioners. There was a period in which market forces and economic concerns overrode safety concerns as a result of the early privatisation regimes, but we would not want to go back to the days when those economic concerns undermined safety, especially in industries such as rail and shipping. As the consultation is rolled out, I would welcome the Government ensuring that there is full consultation with all relevant bodies, particularly the unions, with experience of the period when safety was undermined, especially in the rail sector, so that that can inform the introduction of this aspect of the Bill. I hope that the Government will think again about the drafting of the proposal, because there are serious concerns about the conflicts that it will bring about between considerations of safety and of economic costs.
The Government should approach a number of the Bill’s proposals on education with trepidation, especially the devolution of school dates to individual schools. There is an understanding that parents want some certainty about school hours and holidays. With the devolution of such measures, near chaos could break out as individual schools determine their own dates and holidays. I caution the Government that parents may become anxious as the wider community becomes aware of these measures.
There are concerns—certainly among teachers—about schedule 14, which sets out proposals to reduce burdens on schools, including the removal of the obligation on employers of teachers in English maintained schools to have regard to statutory guidance relating to staffing matters such as the appointment, suspension, discipline and dismissal of teachers. There is concern that that may lead to the removal of the obligation on the Secretary of State to provide guidance on staffing matters, which might ultimately be a threat to school staffing regulations. If that is the case, schools will be concerned that they will have to take individual legal advice on staffing matters rather than adhering to what is relatively clear staff guidance and regulations from central Government. The Government must look at the consequences of such a broad-brush legislative proposal.
I am anxious about the removal of home-school agreements, which are good and are working on the ground. They were welcomed by the educational establishment and have general support, so I do not understand why the Government have provided in schedule 14 to remove the requirement on governing bodies to adopt such an a agreement.
As others have said, we all welcome the ability to remove unnecessary or archaic regulations, but the Bill is littered with proposals to remove regulations that are relevant, and their removal could have consequences beyond those calculated by the Government, including an impact on safety, which is the major concern that I have tried to express this evening.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
May I begin by welcoming the Bill and commending my hon. Friends the Members for Macclesfield (David Rutley), for Witham (Priti Patel), and for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) for their excellent contributions to the debate? I believe that the Bill will act as another lever to encourage economic growth, and it builds on this Government’s record of scrapping obsolete legislation.
I have said before in the Chamber—and I will say it again—that the business of business is business, and the business of government is creating an environment in which business feels confident to grow, thrive and create jobs to create wealth and pay taxes that support our whole economy. The Bill is part of that.
Since the Government took office, some 800 regulations have been scrapped or improved, giving business a welcome lift, including, if you will excuse the pun, Mr Deputy Speaker, changes to working at height legislation. Indeed, there are 2,200 regulations in the Government’s sights for abolition or reform. It is estimated that when this work is completed—if it is ever completed, because regulation needs to be looked at all the time—these measures will save business £850 million a year, underlining the Government’s support for enterprise, entrepreneurs and job creators.
I should like to turn specifically to some of the economic growth clauses that have provoked the most interest, debate and discussion, including in the Chamber today, beginning with clause 1, which aims to take those who are self-employed and who pose no risk to others out of the scope of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. That could remove the unnecessary burden of health and safety regulations from 800,000 self-employed people.
Andrew Bridgen
I thank my right hon. Friend for moving the goalposts in the right direction.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
I am glad to have the opportunity to say a few words in this debate. It is obviously right for Governments periodically to review regulation, not just once a Parliament, as the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) said, but on a continuing basis. Having served for a number of years on the Regulatory Reform Committee during the Labour Government’s period in office, I know that we did a lot to try to simplify regulations in many ways.
Certainly, there is no objection in principle to the idea of a Bill that, every now and then, seeks to remove the regulatory burdens that can build up. One of the criticisms of this Bill is that many of the proposed measures are so minimal in their impact that one wonders why they could not have been brought forward years ago. I find it hard to believe that it has taken the great minds of the Department almost four years under a Conservative Government to work on the measure relating to the sale of yarn and other similar, relatively minor measures. One would think that this Government, who are so stated in their commitment to abolishing unnecessary regulation, could have done that at an earlier stage, even though such measures are welcome.
Some measures are to be welcomed. The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) has mentioned the measure relating to rights of way. They do not apply to my constituents—it is a devolved issue—but from what he has said it sounds like a sensible measure that should be enacted, as I am sure it will be.
The Bill also proposes to repeal those sections of the Digital Economy Act 2010 that allow courts the power to order internet service providers to block access to websites that infringe copyright. I understand that those sections have never been used. Many Members made very strong arguments against them at the time, because they felt they were unnecessary, but we were told they were important. I confess that I was one of the Back Benchers who rebelled against the measures and did not support them, and now, four years later, we find out that they were not necessary in the first place. Clearly, it is right to repeal them and perhaps that highlights the need closely and thoroughly to scrutinise Bills.
That highlights one of the problems with the way in which the Government have described this Bill, because those measures have never been used and are, therefore, not a burden on business. Business is not having to spend lots of money to address the measures, because they have never been applied to anyone. That is also true of other measures in the Bill. I accept, however, that the possibility of a measure being taken against a business might jeopardise its activities, so it is a good thing to address that.
Questions have to be asked about other measures and I hope the Minister will address them either when he replies to the debate or at a later stage. I was interested to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) raise the issue—I had not appreciated this fully—of the proposals relating to international marine agreements. I have served on the Environmental Audit Committee for some time and we have had a few major discussions about the international marine and maritime agreements, some of which are very important. As my hon. Friend said, both the trade unions and the shipping industry have concerns about the effect some of the measures will have on shipping interests, so it is important that we scrutinise them properly. I may have misunderstood the full import of those provisions; if so, but I have no doubt that the Minister will clarify them.
Mr Letwin
In the light of the comments made by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), which made me look again at clause 59 to see whether my memory was in any way mistaken, I think it would be helpful to give some clarification. Neither the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) nor the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington is correctly informed: the Bill does not in any way diminish the ability of Parliament to scrutinise the measures. It enables the Minister to make ambulatory references to international law through a statutory instrument. It would then be perfectly open to Parliament to debate that statutory instrument and come to the view that it should be drafted otherwise.
Mark Lazarowicz
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that helpful clarification.
Another question arises from a letter sent by the Law Society of Scotland to every Scottish MP. Perhaps the Minister will address its two particular concerns either now or in Committee. First, on clauses 10 to 12, it is
“concerned about partial authorisation of insolvency practitioners.”
It points out that, in Scotland,
“significant parts of the corporate insolvency”
regime
“are linked to bankruptcy legislation”,
and its view is that the proposed regime of
“partial authorisation as an insolvency practitioner will not be effective in Scotland because of the linkage between company insolvency and bankruptcy law.”
I have no doubt that that point can be pursued in future.
Secondly, the Law Society of Scotland is concerned about clause 44 on the repeal of the duty of the senior president of tribunals to report on the standards of decision making. This is another measure where it is hard to see how it can be a major burden on business. The only burden is the duty on the senior president to make a report, which a Minister can then presumably choose to act on.
I note with some concern, given my own involvement in it, the provisions that would repeal certain sections of the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act 2006, which, the Minister may recall, I promoted as a private Member’s Bill. Indeed, he and I co-operated on many aspects of it. Perhaps I should at this point declare an interest as an unpaid board member of the Edinburgh community energy co-operative. The Act has a number of measures to promote sustainable and renewable energy and action on and awareness of climate change. I fully accept that many of the Act’s measures have been taken on board elsewhere since it was enacted, including by the Climate Change Act 2008. However, not all of the 2006 Act’s provisions have been taken on board elsewhere, so I would be concerned to see them removed to the extent proposed by the Bill.
My final comments relate to the implications of the duty in clauses 61 to 64 to take account of the
“desirability of promoting economic growth.”
As Opposition Members have said, we support the general desirability of promoting economic growth. Indeed, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) pointed out, regulators are already expected to take such concerns into account. They do not usually produce regulations without any wider consultation or discussions. They have processes whereby they seek comments from business, among others, and we can be pretty certain that, when business feels that a regulation is damaging economic growth, it will say so. I find it hard to understand how this proposal will have anything other than damaging consequences.
Mr Letwin
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making a characteristically thoughtful contribution. It seems to me that his structural argument—and, indeed, that of other Opposition Members, including the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, who have made serious contributions on the subject of clause 61—ignores the fact that, at the moment, regulators do not have that duty, and the result is that they would be failing in their duties if they were to pay specific attention to economic growth, even in the way the clause requires, which is as a balance to their other duties. For example, the Environment Agency, which always has to attend to environmental considerations, is positively not allowed to pay attention to growth duties.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. May I help a little? If we are to have interventions, could they be a little shorter, because some of them are almost turning into speeches?
Mr Letwin
I am sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker. I accept this is a slightly odd way to conduct a debate, but it seems to me to be productive, so bear with us.
There could of course be a general duty to have regard to sustainable development instead of all the duties on all the regulators—we could say that we do not need any other duties—but all the other regulators have lots of other duties, and by introducing economic growth not as an override but as a balancing consideration, that precisely induces them to consider the totality, namely sustainable development.
Mark Lazarowicz
I am grateful to the Minister for his comments, and I welcome his commitment to a balancing duty, with all duties being taken into account in decision making. I am not sure whether the Bill will have such an effect if it becomes law, but that point can no doubt be pursued through amendments in Committee and on Report, if necessary.
It is important not to forget or lose sight of the fact that although it is important to take into account the economic growth imperative, the other concerns that I and my colleagues have raised must also be kept in the balance. Notwithstanding the Minister’s assurances, which I am sure are genuine, I remain concerned that the effect of the Bill, as now proposed, will be to put other objectives lower in the pecking order of decision making than the requirement to consider the needs of economic growth, and I certainly hope that those points can be teased out and clarified at a later stage in the Bill’s progress.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
I was on the Joint—or pre-legislative scrutiny—Committee, and it was quite evident that there has been a lack of consultation with the people who will be involved in the Bill’s multitude of changes to regulations.
The Committee wondered whether there would be much opposition to the Bill as a whole and whether it would go through Parliament without any difficulties. When we look at the variety and the wide range of what the clauses are about, we can see that the Bill may contain problems. It moves from health and safety to driving instructors, and from sellers of knitting yarn—nearly every speaker has mentioned them—to child trust fund transfers. It is a mishmash of clauses about regulations, but the reality is that each one is important to somebody: each of these pieces of legislation is there for some reason.
The Minister for Government Policy made light of the Bill, which I am not sure is right, because it embodies plenty of important issues. The Bill is a package of measures, so for it to get the consent of the House, there need to be big changes. He mentioned Charlie Chaplin and children’s liqueur chocolates, for example, but we have concerns about safety and health, and others that I will come on to. I have grave concerns about clause 1 on “Health and safety at work: general duty of self-employed persons”, and clause 2 on the “Removal of employment tribunals’ power to make wider recommendations”, as well as clauses 61 to 64 on the “Exercise of regulatory functions”.
Clause 1 is a particular concern, because it serves no purpose other than to confuse. The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) said quite the opposite, but we are entitled to take different views. That is the sort of thing that the Bill will invoke. The clause will take those self-employed who pose no risk to others out of the scope of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 by restricting its coverage to a self-employed person
“who conducts an undertaking of a prescribed description”.
At this point, we are not even sure what the prescribed descriptions will be. They will be determined by the Secretary of State in regulations. The clause is therefore problematic because we are not sure what the regulations will say or mean.
Ian Lavery
It is good news that, at least in Committee, people will have a much clearer understanding of the descriptions.
It is not fair to say that there is no problem in relation to the safety and health of self-employed people. Fatality rates among self-employed people are 1.1 per 100,000, as opposed to 0.4 per 100,000 for employees. It is important to recognise and listen to what experts are saying. In opposing the clause, Richard Jones, the head of public affairs and policy at the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health—it is hardly a revolutionary organisation —said:
“IOSH fully supports the simplification of legislation and guidance, but is against lowering of standards that could lead to more accidents and deaths. As we have made clear to Government, we think it would be unhelpful, unnecessary and unwise to exempt certain self-employed from health and safety law, as the Government is proposing—causing more of a hindrance than a help. Health and safety is often misunderstood and wrongly labelled as a barrier to business—whereas in fact, it sustains business growth and success. The Government needs to promote this message, provide health and safety support for SMEs and debunk the misperceptions.”
The Prime Minister has made it clear to bodies such as the Federation of Small Businesses that he will continue to champion deregulation as a public service to small businesses. However, if clause 1 is agreed to, it might exempt 1 million people from health and safety law. Health and safety failures in the UK cost billions per year.
At present, the self-employed have a legal duty to ensure that they protect others from harm resulting from their work activity. There is no confusion: everyone is very clear that no one, even the self-employed, can take risks with the safety or health of others. That is the situation as it stands. At present, the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act can be used only when a person puts another person at risk. If someone is injured through their work, regardless of what they previously believed, the Act will apply. No self-employed person has ever been prosecuted or threatened with prosecution for risking only their own health. However, the Act means that the Health and Safety Executive has been able to give them guidance on how they can protect their own safety. Despite the Bill, every self-employed person will still have to do risk assessments to see whether their work poses a risk to others. If there is no risk, there is not a problem, which is just the same as it is now.
That situation will not change, but what will change is the confusion and complacency that the Bill will introduce. Self-employed people will be unsure whether they are covered, or they may assume that they are not covered if they are not on the list of prescribed occupations or sectors, even assuming that they are fully aware of the list. Worse still, people who control workplaces for the self-employed will wrongly think that they do not have a duty of care to them. Self-employed people who employ others may interpret the provision to mean that they are exempt from the law. Given that the most dangerous industries—agriculture and construction, for example—contain a high proportion of self-employed people, anything that confuses the situation is a recipe for disaster. The Bill states that it will reduce the
“burdens resulting from legislation for businesses or other organisations or for individuals”.
In fact, it will do the opposite. It will not change the situation for those who genuinely do not pose a risk to others, but will create complete confusion for all other self-employed people.
Clause 2 removes the power of employment tribunals to make wider recommendations to employers who are found to have discriminated unlawfully. The Labour party totally opposes that clause. Before the introduction of the Equality Act 2010, a tribunal could only provide a remedy to successful claimants and could not recommend that an employer address the root causes of the discrimination. In almost three quarters of cases, the victim leaves the workplace. The tribunal was unable to ask an employer to change its policies, its practices or a culture that would be likely to lead to further discrimination.
The Government want to repeal the provision that allows tribunals to make wider recommendations because of employers’ fears about inappropriate or excessive recommendations. However, there is no credible evidence to support that argument. In 2012, there were 19 cases in which tribunals issued wider recommendations, according to a recent study that was published in the Equality Opportunities Review. In 15 cases, the recommendation was for training on equality and diversity. In seven cases, respondents were asked to address equality issues generally or to review policies. Such recommendations are made by a tribunal judge and two lay members, including one who represents business. After considering all the evidence at the full hearing, they make proportionate and reasonable suggestions to address the serious cases of discrimination.
Clauses 61 to 64 have been discussed widely by Members on both sides of the House. They are of great concern to Labour Members. They will impose a new duty on some bodies to have regard, in exercising their regulatory functions, to the desirability of promoting economic growth. It is, of course, important that regulators do not set out to impede economic growth. However, having a statutory duty that obliges them to have regard to economic growth in the exercise of their functions, with no clarity as to how it might operate, will potentially interfere with their ability to perform their statutory duties. There is a danger that those who are regulated will attempt to use the new duty to override the actions of the regulator. For example, a business could argue that requiring a particular process to be undertaken before it conducts a certain activity would prevent it from making a profit and thus reduce its ability to grow. On the other hand, not conducting such a process could lead to an accident or to an employee becoming ill. Which of the competing duties would prevail and who would make that decision?
On education, paragraph 1 of schedule 14 removes the requirement on governing bodies in England to ensure that policies that are designed to promote good behaviour among pupils are pursued at their school. Surely it is a mistake to remove that requirement. In the past few days, the Secretary of State for Education has stated that discipline is lacking in schools, and has said what teachers, head teachers and governing bodies should do to instil more discipline. However, under the Bill, behaviour policies may be watered down or removed. Effective pupil behaviour policies are made through collaboration between the head teacher, the governors and the teaching staff. Ofsted is inspecting pupil behaviour more closely than ever before.
Paragraph 3 of schedule 14 transfers the responsibility for determining school term dates from local authorities in England to governing bodies. Teachers and parents share concerns about letting schools decide on their own terms and holidays. The National Union of Teachers commissioned YouGov to survey teachers in 2013. The vast majority of teachers—80%—said that it was important that schools maintained similar term dates. There are also concerns about the statutory guidance on staffing matters in schools.
Before I conclude, I want to mention a number of other clauses that cause me great concern. Clause 23 will remove restrictions on the provision of passenger rail services. Clause 26 will remove the duty to order the rehearing of marine accident investigations. Clause 59 relates to ambulatory references to international shipping instruments. I am concerned about those clauses among many others.
In Committee, consideration needs to be given to a raft of serious and detailed issues, especially safety and health. This is a mixed bag of a Bill. It is hard to support it in its present state because of the variety of deregulatory measures that it contains. Some of them are simple, but some of them are very significant.
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
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
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.
Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)
We have had a series of bombshells during this debate. As became increasingly evident would be the case, no Lib Dems whatever have spoken in this Second Reading debate or even intervened, which I thought was very telling.
There were also a series of bookended bombshells. At the end of the debate we heard from the hon. Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace), who I was not aware had qualified as an Austrian ski instructor. I will certainly take that on board next time I am on the piste.
The Minister who opened the debate mentioned in his second or third sentence the fact that regulation was, to use his phrase, often sensible and necessary, which also came as a bombshell. That was welcome and—to be sensible for a moment—set the tone of the debate throughout: that we should try to have a regulatory regime that is proportionate and appropriate, but that any unnecessary legislation should be removed from the statute book. We on the Labour Benches would certainly agree with that.
The Minister also mentioned—this was the biggest bombshell of all—that Charlie Chaplin can be now be rehabilitated. Chaplin, who was seen as a communist in the United States in the 1950s, has now been fully rehabilitated into the Conservative party of the 21st century. That is welcome. The Minister said that village halls up and down the country are happy to be able to screen Chaplin. I have to ask him: has he seen “A Woman of Paris”, which highlights illicit sex encounters between an unmarried young woman and her boyfriend, who shoots himself at the end of the film? Is this the type of film that the Minister wants to deregulate, to ensure that it is available to the village halls and the spinsters of old England? I do not think it should be.
This is a somewhat ad hoc Bill. The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) called it a hotch-potch, while my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) called it a mishmash. The Minister has scouted and hawked round Whitehall for the best part of a year, asking for any ideas for a deregulatory Bill. In many respects, that is not necessarily a bad thing. It is good, as we have heard several times, to have a spring clean. However, I disagree with a lot of what the Minister said. He opened the debate by saying that health and safety legislation was “wretched stuff”. I hope he will use this opportunity to say that not all health and safety legislation is wretched.
Mr Letwin
I never said any such thing. What I was referring to was ludicrously overburdensome guidance that is verbose and unclear. That is the bit that is wretched stuff. Of course health and safety legislation is necessary and desirable; it is a question of trying to make sure that is straightforward, clear and to the point.
Mr Wright
The phrase that the Minister has just used—straightforward, clear and to the point—is very important, because I am not entirely certain that clause 1 is. My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck said that it serves no purpose other than to confuse, and I have to agree with him. The Health and Safety Executive consulted on the proposals. To be fair, clause 1 was the preferred option, but the majority of those responding to the consultation opposed the idea.
As has been said several times in the debate, the Opposition are concerned that clause 1 does not really have any tangible impact, but introduces more confusion for self-employed people, who may wrongly think that they are exempt from health and safety laws. No self-employed person has ever been prosecuted or threatened with prosecution for risking only their own health. Given that only people who pose no risk to anybody will be exempt, I cannot see how there will be a practical impact on business or individuals. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which we have heard about, can already be used only in circumstances where a person puts another person at risk anyway.
We have heard about the construction sector on a number of occasions. There is an awful lot of bogus self-employment in the construction industry. Does clause 1 deal with that? I thought that the Minister was very precise, in a vague sort of way, in his use of language, because he said that by the time the Bill reached Committee, “activities” would be prescribed. Is that activities or professions and jobs? It would useful to have an idea about that, because we are extremely concerned about clause 1. We would like clarification, both this evening and in Committee, about which jobs will be excluded and reassurances that protections will be in place.
Mr Letwin
Of course I am happy to provide that clarification. When the shadow Minister sees the prescribed list, he will see that it largely concerns activities, but also certain sectors in which so many of the activities cause dangers to other people involved in them that they are completely exempted from the provision.
Mr Wright
That is helpful.
I thought the hon. Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley) made a great speech, which was quite literally Churchillian in its approach. Let us not forget that the second Churchill Government produced the Mines and Quarries Act 1954, because Churchill recognised the importance of improved regulation and health and safety in things such as welfare and employment, especially for women and young people. In terms of domestic legislation, the Churchill Administration of 1951 to ’55 were very progressive.
The hon. Gentleman talked about first-time entrepreneurs and first-time exporters. He talked about realising dreams and achieving objectives. I have to agree with him: that is exactly what we want to see. However, there is nothing in this Bill that allows that to happen. Not one jot of what he mentioned in his rhetoric would be allowed under this Bill.