Regulatory Impact Assessments Bill

Roger Gale Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 20th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I think that is a pretty fair summary. If my right hon. Friend wants me to give a summary, that is not far off the mark. Yes, I am pretty sure that that will be the case.

I am afraid to say that, frankly, that is not going to change until Members of Parliament raise their game, to be perfectly honest. I am not particularly pinning the blame on the Government. They do their thing and their job is to get through what they want to get through. The people who should be holding the Government to account are us—those on these Back Benches and on the Opposition Benches. Our solemn duty is to hold the Government of the day to account, yet my point is that we are absolutely hopeless at doing so. As I have said, during the passage of the Climate Change Act, nobody was interested in the cost-benefit analysis. They were just voting for it like sheep because they thought it would be popular, or because there had been an email campaign encouraging them to do so. They were not doing the job they were paid to do, which was to scrutinise the legislation.

This comes back to the other flaw in the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said that the Government should have to bring forward a cost-benefit analysis, and Members of Parliament could then scrutinise it and make a decision. I have to say to him that, if the Government refuse to bring forward an impact assessment or cost-benefit analysis, Members already have the power to say, “Actually, we’re not going to support this until you do bring forward a cost-benefit analysis.” The solution to the problem he is seeking to solve already lies in the hands of Members on the Back Benches and on the Opposition Benches if they are simply prepared to assert themselves and make it clear to Ministers, “We’re not just going to rubber-stamp something because you tell us it’s a good thing to do. Until you bring forward the evidence that shows it’s a good thing to do, we’re not going to support it.”

How many times do Members of Parliament ever say that to the Government? They do not say that; they just nod and go along with it. I do not think the Government are actually the biggest problem. I think it is Members of Parliament on the Back Benches and on the Opposition Benches who are the biggest problem, because we do not need this legislation. Members of Parliament should assert themselves and force Ministers to do this anyway.

A cost-benefit analysis brought forward by the Government in effect amounts to Ministers marking their own homework in that, when they bring forward a Bill, they also bring forward the cost-benefit analysis. I am not persuaded at all by the Minister that some body of the great and the good is rubber-stamping what the Government have come up with, no doubt after being appointed by the Government to do that job. What use is that? We want people who have not been appointed by the Government to scrutinise the Bill, not people who have been appointed by them.

Of course, we know that this is the case because it goes back to what George Osborne said at the time he set up the Office for Budget Responsibility. The reason he set it up, as colleagues will remember, is that he was fed up of the previous Government coming up with bogus forecasts to justify their policies and decisions at Budgets and autumn statements. They had, in effect, manipulated the figures to stick within the arbitrary rules they had set for themselves, which they then perhaps no longer wanted to keep. They were in charge of the forecasts and the figures, and they manipulated the figures for their own political advantage. George Osborne’s stated reason for introducing the Office for Budget Responsibility was, in effect, that the Treasury could not be trusted to come up with honest figures that we could all rely on, all the figures were dodgy and we needed an independent body to do it.

If the Bill passes and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch says, “I want the Minister to come up with a cost-benefit analysis,” all we are doing is handing the cost-benefit analysis to the Treasury, which previous Chancellors have said cannot be trusted to come up with accurate forecasts and figures. I am not entirely sure what use it would be to the decision-making process if we ever got to the point where a Member of Parliament was actually interested in what the cost-benefit analysis said.

I feel slightly conflicted. On the basis of what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and my right hon. Friends the Members for Tatton and for Gainsborough said, this seems, at face value, a very obvious, simple thing to do. I repeat that I cannot understand why any Minister who wanted to make decisions would not want to go through this process. But I fear that, despite the best intentions of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, it would not deliver the outcome that he seeks or, in the end, particularly improve decision making in this House.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

I call the shadow Minister.