Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman is right that the creative industries sector, which is crucial to the economy, depends heavily on intellectual property rights. However, we are dealing with a body of law that is extremely old—I believe that it goes back to Queen Anne. It certainly needs modification in the digital age. He is right that we need to move extremely carefully. That is why, over the last few weeks, we have been in discussions on some of the sensitive issues in relation to copying music and photography. When he studies the report in the Library, he will see that we have got the balance right between rights holders and liberalisation.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

13. What estimate he has made of the costs incurred by businesses due to regulation since May 2010.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

The Government are reducing the overall burden of regulation affecting business. From January we will further tighten the screw on regulation by doubling the challenge from one in, one out to one in, two out. The impact of regulation is independently verified and reported twice a year in the statement of new regulation. We published the fifth statement this week for the first half of next year, which forecasts that by July we will have reduced the annual cost of regulation to business by over £900 million.

[Mr Leigh]

I was told by a colleague that early in this Parliament a Minister responsible for deregulation—not the current Minister—rushed into a meeting with his colleagues to say that although his civil servants wanted to increase the number of regulations on business by 67 this month, with hard fighting he had beat them down to 57. That is still 57 extra regulations this month. Is my right hon. Friend going to bear down on that and ensure that by the time of the next general election there is a real, dynamic reduction in regulation on business?

[Michael Fallon]

Yes. This Government intend to be the first ever to reduce the overall burden of regulation during their time in office. If my hon. Friend looks at the fifth statement of new regulation, he will see that—significantly—more regulations will be removed over the next six months from January than will be added. As I said, the overall cost reduction to business is nearly £1 billion.