Steve Baker
Main Page: Steve Baker (Conservative - Wycombe)Department Debates - View all Steve Baker's debates with the Cabinet Office
(10 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Letwin
My hon. Friend is quite right. Leaving aside the badinage induced by Opposition Members, the serious point is that even before the renegotiation, the Government have made an extremely serious attempt at deregulation in the EU, working with British business to identify the most important things—I will send a list of them to the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), too, because I doubt he has taken the trouble to read what has already been widely published—but that is an arduous undertaking. By contrast, the Bill deals with those things that we can manage under our control in this House, and we should do so right away.
Steve Baker
I welcome the Bill and reassure my right hon. Friend that I would be surprised if history remembered this Government as radically liberal. Before he goes too much further into the detail, however, will he reassure me that he has considered, or that he will consider, sunset clauses for all new regulations?
Mr Letwin
I have good news for my hon. Friend: it is not a matter of considering it; we have done it. Every single new regulation we have brought in—incidentally, their number is limited by our one in, two out principle, which means they are slightly more than twice balanced by things that we have removed from the statute book—contains a sunset provision. We took that step right at the beginning of our taking office, and the purpose is to ensure that people do not mindlessly roll out the same regulations long after they have passed their sell-by date.
If I may, I want to return to the Bill—for a moment at least. To set the scene, the Bill is just one small part of the process. The red tape challenge looked at about 6,000 regulations. The one in, two out constraint holds back the stream, while the red tape challenge removes water from the lake behind the dam. In addition, and just as importantly, we have spent an enormous amount of time and energy focusing on enforcement, because it is not just a matter of what regulations or indeed statutory guidance are in place, but a matter of how things are enforced. We have been taking considerable steps to ensure that the agencies responsible for regulation enforce in a way that is much more conscious of the needs of our businesses.
In that context, clause 61, which is probably the single most important clause in the Bill, creates a growth duty—[Interruption.] Do look it up, please; it is useful for Opposition Members to know about a Bill when they are about to launch an attack on it. The clause requires our non-economic regulators, every time they make a decision, to spend time and energy considering whether that decision takes proper account of the need for economic growth. That is not to say that that consideration should overrule all regulators’ duties, but we are trying to create a sense of proportionality and to ensure that our regulators consider effects on growth as they go about their duties.