Deregulation

Priti Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Dr Coffey]

My hon. Friend makes a fair point, and on the subject of energy, the energy red tape challenge will close in less than an hour, according to the Twitter feed on the red tape challenge.

I understand my hon. Friend’s point completely. There is an interesting balance to be struck in legislating for safety by introducing regulations. I agree with her that we do not want unnecessary regulations introduced to try to keep cartels or oligopolies going. Whether it is in response to the REACH—registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—directive or the herbal products directive, which we are busy trying to implement at the moment in response to European laws that have been passed, there is an argument for allowing people to make their own decisions and choices, rather than having regulation decide things for them.

I also wanted to refer to my hon. Friend’s work on child care. She has done quite a lot of policy work about the cost of child care, and how costs that have been driven into the industry mean that child care becomes exceptionally expensive for parents who want to go to work, but who sometimes cannot afford to, or for whom work seems only to pay for the costs of child care. The question is rightly being asked: what is driving that cost? Looking after children of course takes skill, but it need not take a graduate degree. Over the years, we have ended up with various regulations, leading to a situation in 2009 when two police officers were told that they could not look after each other’s children for more than so many hours at a time because, as they were not registered as child minders, the activity was deemed illegal. The Government looked into the matter, but this is another example of common sense being replaced by some bright spark’s desire to ensure that children are looked after only by child minders, rather than by their parents’ friends or colleagues.

Another issue that comes up regularly is the portability of the Criminal Records Bureau check. Someone going into a school might need five different CRB checks, depending on the activity they want to do. I know that the Government are looking into such issues but, as I said at the start of my speech, I encourage them to go much further, much faster. Not only will that help their constituents, but it will free up Government time to focus on what really matters—assisting people at home and helping businesses to grow and to employ people.

The Prime Minister is reported to have said in the past few days that he is looking for Ministers to ensure that their Bills pass the U-turn test—in other words, to ensure that there are no U-turns. Some of this is about drafting simpler legislation, but a lot of it is about not trying to regulate for every possible scenario. One of the challenges that our country has been facing—this is no criticism of the people involved—is that an openness to having everything in regulation means that measures can become a lawyers’ picnic, with everything open to judicial review. The constant desire to put everything in statute is a huge challenge, because people almost cannot turn for the risk of being taken to court or to judicial review. That is not to say, of course, that people should not have recourse to action when something is patently unfair, but we all, as Members of Parliament, need to consider whether we will end up with lawyers and judges deciding what is right and wrong, rather than Parliament deciding on that through better laws.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Businesses, certainly in my constituency but also across the country, definitely welcome the Government’s agenda of deregulating much more, but does she agree that small and medium-sized businesses are still deeply sceptical and concerned about the constant battles they face, including legal judgments and even with local authorities, which seem to think they know best, when it is the businesses themselves that know how to get on and make the right decisions to thrive and grow?

[Dr Coffey]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, especially about the role of local authorities. With her pedigree in a family business and through her subsequent work, she knows about the challenges that people in our constituencies face every day. I will mention one case.

To my surprise, my local district council has responded in an over-the-top way to a deemed health and safety risk. In one part of the country, problems were identified with a commercial building’s liquefied petroleum gas tank, and that led to a measure, across the country, to investigate every such LPG tank. That led to a series of visits, and to changes having to be made. Tanks have not exploded and no risk has been identified, but the tanks must now have cages and there must be a clearing away from the site. There was also a two-page detailed submission by the council officer, essentially telling people that they had to provide details, written instructions, training, and a sign to explain how to call the emergency services, instead of allowing our local pub to use common sense: “If there’s a fire, I’ll tell you what: you just call 999.” I was told: “Well, that business might not have mainly English-speaking people working in it.” For God’s sake, let us use our common sense, so that council officers are talking to their businesses and not issuing two-page template instructions about how to dial 999.

I appreciate that setting out laws represents an ambition—a way of ensuring that we do things in a certain manner—but I encourage the Government to try to not only take the scissors to red tape, as they are already doing, but to get out the shears and really start hacking back. This is about supporting common sense and having simpler legislation. I have every confidence in the Minister, but please, let us go for as short a haircut as we can.