Deregulation: Public Services and Health and Safety — House of Lords, 2017-07-13
Topic: International Affairs
David Prior (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not think that there is any doubt about that on all sides of the House; even people who were supportive of Brexit will accept that Europe has brought us some good things. One of the criticisms has often been that we have gold-plated things that have come out of Europe and made them stronger On the subject of Europe, as it happens, I just received a "Dear Colleague" letter from David Davis, and it is worth reading just one paragraph. He says that the repeal Bill, "ensures, as far as possible, that the same rules and laws will apply on the day after exit as on the day before. For business, workers and consumers across the UK this means that they can have confidence that they will not be subject to unexpected changes on the day we leave the EU … This Bill is not a vehicle for policy changes" It is worth making sure that that is on the record Turning back to regulation, it needs to be kept under constant review. Products change, technology changes, and, more than anything, people’s expectations change. The noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Hunt, went back 30 or 40 years, and all Governments, rightly, while not obsessed with the need to review regulation constantly, have taken it seriously. A fault of regulation is that although it can drive up quality, it can also level down to minimum standards. That is one of the reasons why it has to be constantly reviewed, because what was acceptable 30 or 40 years ago may not be acceptable today. That is one of the reasons why regulation needs constant revision What has been the recent history of keeping our rulebooks and regulation up to date? Over the past 20 years, all Governments of all parties have been working consistently on getting the delicate balance right between the costs and benefits of regulation, developing a number of tools and institutions to make our rulebooks the right ones to have. The tone that has surrounded the debate about regulation has not been a happy one. Regulations and those who enforce them have been subject to caricature and ridicule. The culture that has surrounded regulation has not been very constructive In 1997 the Labour Government set up the Better Regulation Task Force. I think it is worth stressing the word "better"—it was better, not lesser, and that has been a consistent theme for the past 20 years. The Better Regulation Task Force identified the basic tests of whether any regulation is fit for purpose, which were set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley: proportionality, accountability, consistency, transparency and targeting. The only word I would add is "intelligent". There are times when regulations have ticked the box but entirely missed the point. Regulations need to be enforced intelligently. Sometimes more is less March 2005 saw the creation of the Better Regulation Executive and the publication of the Hampton report, which led to the introduction of the Regulators’ Code in 2008, which asks regulators to perform their duties in a business-friendly way, by planning regulation and inspections in a way that causes least disruption to the economy. At the same time the Government adopted a target to reduce the administrative burdens of legislation, such as form-filling, by 25%. The rule that has attracted the most criticism today is the coalition Government’s one-in, one-out rule, which later became one in, two out. I should say that in taking two out, they did not have to come from the same area: if you introduced one regulation on safety, you did not have to take out two relating to safety. The coalition also introduced the Red Tape Challenge initiative to tackle the stock of regulation by asking the public to help identify outdated, unnecessary or overly complex legislation I argue that these initiatives have delivered some real improvements in how people, business and public bodies are regulated. This includes the removal of some outdated and rather bizarre rules, such as the requirement for childminders who feed children in their care to register as a food business, or the ban on teenagers buying Christmas crackers. But it has also seen the removal of a huge amount of unnecessary form-filling, as well as simplification; for example, 37 million vehicles no longer need a paper tax disc, and small firms do not have to do full audits on their accounts, saving them some £300 million a year Of course, in the light of the awful tragedy at Grenfell, we are looking at regulation anew.