Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Davies Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

The package proposed by Lord Browne as a whole is intended to put our universities on a stable and secure long-term funding basis that will enable us to support and encourage their work in research, and we are considering carefully the new proposals from Sir James Dyson for technology innovation centres.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

T3. Further to the excellent question from my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), given the volume of regulation that comes from the EU, does the Minister accept that unless the one-in, one-out policy applies to EU regulation as well, it will have only a limited impact? I understand that the Minister said that the policy would apply to EU legislation in due course, but can he give us a time scale for that?

[Mr Prisk]

There are two steps. One is to ensure that the practice that we follow deals with the gold-plating, which has quite rightly been raised by Members on both sides of the House. That is our first step, but as my hon. Friend has pointed out—and as my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey) pointed out in his answer earlier—we are ensuring that we deal with domestic legislation first. We will then ensure that we look to include EU legislation. [Interruption.] I love this coming from the Opposition, who allowed 14 new working regulations every working day. We are tackling regulation; they funked it.