Deregulation

Thérèse Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Sheridan, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in this important debate about Government policy on deregulation.

I secured this debate partly to publicise the Government’s desire to slash red tape for businesses—and, indeed, in every walk of life—but also to encourage businesses to be very specific, and to participate in the review of red tape so that we do as much as we can to get rid of the red tape that is strangling parts of our industry.

If I were giving a termly report, I would say to the Minister and his colleagues, “Good progress so far, but could do even better.” I agree with others that many huge strides have been made. Understandably, the topic of red tape has the full attention of the Prime Minister and No. 10 Downing street, but it is important that it has the attention of all Departments, covering every industry possible.

My challenge to the Minister and his colleagues is to go further and faster, because in many cases deregulation is free; in fact, it will often save businesses and Government money. Even more importantly, however, we all know that regulation often drives cost. That relates not only to implementation by businesses of measures such as the waste electrical and electronic equipment directive, but the bureaucracy, including inspection to check that measures have been implemented. Regulation is a self-perpetuating industry. We know that the forces of conservatism are entrenched when it comes to ensuring that we have good regulation, which often means a lot of regulation. However, the Minister and I know, as do many other Members, that it is not a case of having no regulation; often, it is a case of having better regulation and less regulation.

It will take great will-power to wrench aspects of bureaucracy into the post-bureaucratic age. Take a simple thing like the requirement for companies to keep six years’ accounts or VAT records. If there are not going to be tax losses, why do we not trim that requirement down to two or three years? There is a desire by Government to make sure that companies have information, just in case. There are other aspects of administration that require businesses to provide information constantly to the Government, whether it is to the Office for National Statistics or other bodies. Frankly, all those things add very little value to a business in its own microcosm; basically, they provide information for free to the Government; they are a way of generating data. In the macro-economic sphere, they may seem good, but if businesses are employing people just to generate statistics or other information for the Government, just in case it is needed, or to comply with a policy, or to satisfy an insurer, and so on, the risk is that businesses will use that talent and those resources not seeking to grow, but seeking to comply.

Of course the European Union has been a huge source of the regulations that have been brought into British law. The majority of the regulations imported from the EU have been generated as a result of the single market and the EU continuing to issue directives. Although I think that we are all great supporters of the single market, I am sure that many of us are not particularly enamoured of how much regulation the single market has brought to our shores. In particular, I am thinking of aspects of certain environmental directives, such as the habitats directive or the water directive.

In a recent statement, the Chancellor said that we want to review quite a lot of those directives, not only to check that they are having the desired effects—the UK Government would not have signed up to them if they did not wish to see a more general approach in particular areas—but to ask whether we are being over-zealous in our interpretation of the directives. Are we getting the balance right between what is in the interests of people and what is in the interests of nature? Are we getting the balance right between consumer and producer? It is critical that we ensure that we have a harmonised approach to understanding how directives should be implemented; we certainly should not gold-plate them in their implementation.

Just last week, I met farmers from my community who are worried about the water directives, how they have been implemented, and the risk that implementation causes in terms of abstraction. That matters because Suffolk is a great producer of many of the crops that we all enjoy around the UK. Suffolk has three potato seasons a year, and it also produces other root vegetables. If Suffolk was not producing that quantity and quality of food, we would basically have to start importing a lot more food. We must ensure that we get the balance right. Elements of food security matter, but so does the environment. We have to respect the environment, sustaining it for the future, and our own farmers know that better than anybody else; they do not want to put themselves out of business overnight. A balanced, sensible, common-sense approach, which involves farmers as much as possible, is needed.

There is another community initiative in my area that has recently been affected by regulation. Plans for a community transport bus are being frustrated at the moment because of a restriction that means that people who passed their driving test after 1995 can carry only a certain amount of weight. That is another European directive that was probably common sense when it was introduced, but it has meant that fewer and fewer people can volunteer to be drivers, or can get their expenses back. That is because the allowable driving weight limit was set some time ago. Of course, those who drive people in wheelchairs, or something similar, around will know that those pieces of equipment have often since become heavier as more technologies are installed in them. As a consequence, fewer people than we would like are able to fill the important role of volunteer driver.

Of course, it is not only European directives that we have put into our regulation; many directives are home-grown, and they often come about in reaction to particular events. Dare I say that the “something must be done” brigade see something happen, and may react by saying, “Something must be done about it; let’s regulate to try and change this behaviour”? We all know that it is not necessarily possible to change behaviour by legislating. We can try to criminalise certain activities, but what is really important is having more positive indications of how we want people, companies and indeed our own councils to behave, rather than simply having a rule whereby they must do something.

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that quite often the regulations that we are discussing have a disproportionate effect on small businesses? For example, farmers in South West Norfolk who are struggling with the natural habitats directive have had to have endless meetings with the local council, Natural England and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to sort things out, which is a huge burden on their administrative time. Moreover, quite often, large businesses, particularly in the banking and energy sectors, lobby Government and support them in introducing more regulation, because they see regulation as a barrier to entry for smaller businesses that are trying to enter those important markets.

[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.