My Lords, I have some sympathy for the some of the issues these amendments explore, although I am not necessarily convinced that the exact proposals as captured in the amendments
would be the right answer. None the less, with reference to Amendment 17, I fully accept that the regulatory target as measured by the Regulatory Policy Committee captures only part of the story. From a business’s point of view, the movement in the net burden of regulation goes beyond the quantum of regulation that the RPC is itself measuring. I fully respect the Government’s commitment to transparency in this area and believe that accessible information is available out there in terms of the additional regulations that are outside the scope of the RPC, but the fact that there is a regulatory burden sitting outside scope could be brought to people’s attention more energetically and more regularly than is currently the case.
The sentiment behind Amendment 18 is interesting. I would probably have approached this in a slightly different way and said that rather than there having to be a report every five years that sets out the methodology and the extent to which some regulations were or were not in scope, perhaps this would be better as an annual exercise. Given that the Regulatory Policy Committee reports annually on its work and the scope it presides over, that cycle might be the right one to link in some sort of wider dissemination or reminder of what exactly the methodology is and to report on the issues that are set out in Amendment 18.
6 pm
Turning to Amendment 38, I am persuaded that the duties proposed in the Bill and related duties from recent Acts that we dealt with in the summer should not adversely affect the capabilities of regulators in discharging their responsibilities. In fact, I think that some of the new duties that we have been or will be imposing on regulators should make their job easier in terms of the more efficient relationships that are being sought between the regulator and the regulated.
However, if, hypothetically, anything about these or related duties could adversely affect the capabilities of a regulator, I hesitate to say that the Regulatory Policy Committee is the right body to conduct a review of the regulator and its duties. First, the RPC is heavily loaded with its current responsibilities, especially given the resources that are available to it. It is doing an extremely good job with its current remit. Its remit has been growing very logically in terms of the quality and quantum of regulation and in the way that departments assess policy options before bringing forward regulatory proposals. To ask the RPC to carry out an annual review of the capabilities and capacity of regulators to discharge their responsibilities would be a step in a very new direction and would require a considerable amount of work on its part.
If there were any concerns about a regulator’s capabilities, the body that would be much better suited to overseeing and reviewing that issue would be the Better Regulation Executive. The BRE already has a routine relationship with regulators in terms of the entirety of their duties. It already has initiatives such as Focus on Enforcement, which is, I think, a better platform from which to take a more rounded view of a regulator’s abilities and capabilities in terms of its statutory responsibilities.
So I do not share the scepticism which lies behind Amendment 38: the belief that the new duties might in any way undermine a regulator’s abilities. But even if one accepts that a review might from time to time be necessary, I do not think that the RPC is the right body to carry it out.