Deregulation: Public Services and Health and Safety — House of Lords, 2017-07-13
Topic: Mixed Topics
Christine Mary Crawley (Labour, Centre-left): It is a delight to follow my noble friend Lord Smith of Finsbury, one of our great regulators. It is my fate as sweeper in this incredibly knowledgeable debate to repeat what other noble Lords have already said, but not quite so well. I congratulate my noble friend on securing this timely, indeed prescient, debate and on her excellent and sensitive opening remarks. I declare an interest as outgoing president of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute and chair of the Consumer Codes Approval Board Just a month ago, an appalling fire broke out at Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey tower block in North Kensington. So far, 80 people are presumed dead, with the final number of deaths not expected to be known until the end of the year. As well as being the most dreadful tragedy for those men, women and children involved, the Grenfell fire has made us all pause as a country and reflect on how such a terrible event could have occurred in the first place and where could be next. People’s safety is now the major talking point in our land. A public inquiry has been launched and will be examining fire safety and construction regulations, as noble Lords have said Yet it is not our role here in Parliament simply to wait for the outcome of that inquiry. It must surely be right for us to discuss and examine more widely where we are in terms of our political and legislative approach to regulation and deregulation in modern Britain, and I therefore welcome today’s debate as part of that important discourse The House of Lords Library briefing for this debate looks dispassionately at how all Governments have approached deregulation over the past 20 years. In looking through that, what I found striking was how, in that time period, we have moved from a position of better regulation, albeit more simplified and more business-friendly, under the Labour Government of 1997—of course we did not get it all right and of course it was the beginning of the madness we see now, but there was a real emphasis on trying to get better regulation—to the very crude "one in, three out" policy of the most recent Conservative Government of 2016, whereby government departments were required to introduce £3 of savings to business for every £1 cost of new regulatory legislation. That, along with statutory regulators also being tasked by government always to look first at the cost to business of regulation, has led to organisations such as the Government’s advisory body, the Regulatory Policy Committee, concluding in 2016 that, "society as a whole is worse off", as a result of government intervention in this field. That is the Government’s own advisory body telling them that It is most surely right to look again at the principles of the 2005 Hampton report, which recommended to the then Labour Government that regulation should be accountable, consistent, proportionate, targeted and transparent. As my noble friend Lord Hunt said in his excellent contribution, we need to get away once and for all from the mantra "regulation bad, deregulation good" and have a grown-up conversation about how we rebalance our priorities not only for business but for the wider public as well Of course, in order for better regulation to work, there must always be the ability to enforce, as noble Lords have said, and we know that many years of austerity budgets have weakened that ability to enforce regulation. In the sector I know best, trading standards, I have seen over the past seven years the loss of more than 50% of the trading standards workforce from local government payrolls. It is not just about fewer people being there to protect British consumers and to enforce their rights, but the loss of so much skill, expertise and handed-down knowledge from a sector that goes back more than 100 years in its public enforcement role in this country. We have to take stock now of where our priorities lie and of what difficult decisions Governments will have to make on taxation versus public spending Many leaders in the regulatory world are increasingly looking to government for some urgent assurances about the future of regulation in a post-Brexit Britain. I am aware of the good work currently being done on this with reference to consumer protection by our House of Lords EU Justice Sub-Committee in taking evidence from organisations such as Citizens Advice, Which?, the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, the Ombudsman Services and others. As other noble Lords have said, the EU has been a positive and protective influence on the British consumer over the past 40 years. It is vital that, in the Brexit lift and shift operation envisaged for transposing EU rights and protections into British law under the repeal Act, consumer rights will not be watered down and diminished. The British people are in no mood to be ignored any longer on this matter of their rights and their personal health and safety, and they are looking to government for robust answers. It is such a shame that, just when those answers are being sought, we are leaving the EU framework of regulation—which we helped to build, by the way—which could help provide future solutions.