6. Other areas of public interest
Better regulation
379. The Department is committed to reducing existing regulatory burdens wherever possible, and to minimising the impact on business of any new legislation, including EU legislation.
380. It is important for the Department to strike the right balance between avoiding unnecessary burdens on business, charities and voluntary organisations, and protecting the interests of citizens.
381. Stephen Timms was the Department’s Better Regulation Minister, with responsibility for promoting the better regulation agenda and for ensuring that regulations:
- are necessary;
- give effective protection;
- balance cost and risk;
- are fair; and
- command public confidence.
382. At board level, the Department’s Director General of Strategy and Pensions oversees the Department’s better regulation work. He is responsible for promoting better regulation in the Department, and for supporting the work of the Department’s Better Regulation Unit (BRU) which is now part of the Department’s Cross-cutting Strategy and Analysis Directorate. This places the BRU at the centre of the Department’s strategic capability, helping to secure further improvements to the Department’s better regulation performance by having direct access to analytical support.
383. The Department is committed to improving the quality of regulation. The Department’s BRU continues to work with the Cabinet Office Better Regulation Executive, to raise departmental awareness of better regulation, and to improve the quality and use of Regulatory Impact Assessments (RIA).
384. Online information on a number of better regulation matters, including guidance on how to produce a RIA is available on the Department’s intranet.
385. The Government’s Better Regulation Action Plan92 has dominated the Department’s Better Regulation landscape this year, in particular the contribution to the Administrative Burdens Reduction (ABR) project led by the Cabinet Office Better Regulation Executive.
386. The Department has been very closely involved in measuring the administrative burden (for example, the cost of providing information and completing forms) placed upon business, charities and the voluntary sector.
387. A Department for Work and Pensions Better Regulation Stakeholder Group (the first in Whitehall), chaired by the Department’s Better Regulation Minister, has been established to advise the Department and to help identify needlessly burdensome regulation and/or that which causes the most irritation.
388. The group has engaged directly with the Department on the ABR project. It has guided and monitored the Department’s progress with it, identified stakeholders willing to participate in the project, and has undertaken scrutiny, challenge and validation functions.
389. The Department is developing a plan for simplifying regulatory burdens, and for removing those which are outdated and outmoded. Stakeholders have been invited to make proposals. A dedicated e-mail address93 has been set up for stakeholders to submit well-reasoned proposals of simplification.
390. The Department has already completed an exercise to consolidate over 200 sets of Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit amending regulations into just four new sets, and revoking over 25 pages, of regulation. This attracted favourable comment from the House of Lords Select Committee on the Merits of Statutory Instruments which applauded the Department’s efforts to clarify for users, this frequently amended area of law.
391. A dedicated benefit simplification team has been set up within the Department as a counter-weight to increasing complexity across the benefit system. The team will publish a guide to best practice for ensuring that consideration is given to simplicity in the development of benefit changes and will work at reducing compexity in existing systems. This work will be informed by an understanding of how the system works for customers, their advocates, other service users, and staff who administer benefits.
392. Employer Direct online has been introduced to provide business with round-the-clock access to job vacancies on one of the largest, and most visited, job websites in the UK. This makes it easy to create, amend, close or re-advertise job vacancies quickly. This service has won a prestigious national e-government award.
393. Generally, the Department for Work and Pensions is not a major regulatory department. During 2005–06, the Department introduced no bills to Parliament but it brought forward 142 sets of regulations, very few of which resulted in new costs to business. Regulation which does have a significant impact on business, charities or the voluntary sector is supported by a Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA).
394. The Department continues to achieve 100 per cent compliance with the RIA process, which underpins policy development work and assists ministers’ consideration of policy options.
395. The RIA process has assisted in clarifying the Department’s negotiations in Europe. The Department’s initial RIA on the impact of the draft EU Directive on the portability of occupational pensions enabled the Department, under the UK’s Presidency of the EU, to instigate a discussion at European level of the Commission’s impact assessment. The initial RIA also identified key issues for
the UK and has shaped the negotiations.
It has also assisted in identifying those issues for stakeholders by accompanying the Department’s consultation document on the proposed Directive, and provided an opportunity for stakeholders to refine the analysis and provide additional supporting material.
396. Where it has been necessary to regulate, the Department has consulted those affected by the legislation at an early stage, considering the views expressed, responding positively to suggestions and altering proposals accordingly where appropriate. The Department issues formal consultation documents and, in many cases, draft legislation.
397. The Department has also continued to consult local authorities in accordance with the central local partnership agreement between government and local authorities.
398. The Department has undertaken a number of full public consultations, each of which lasted at least 12 weeks in accordance with the Cabinet Office’s code of practice on consultation.
399. In a number of instances, when dealing with specialised issues, ministers exercised their discretion not to conduct formal consultation exercises under the code of practice. However, these more limited consultations adopted best practice from the code.
400. For example, limited consultations aimed primarily at the pensions industry have been informed by ongoing discussions with industry representatives on pensions issues who, on a number of occasions, were contacted to agree a suitable period over which to invite responses. By engaging with the appropriate experts in a continuing dialogue, improvements have been made to the drafting of regulations including identification of potential unintended consequences.
401. Consultees are invited to comment to the Department’s consultation co-ordinator on the process of consultation. The Department routinely identifies in its consultation documents when the Government’s response is likely to be published. As with final RIAs, all consultation documents are published on the Department’s website.
402. The Department has continued to make effective use of its stakeholder management arrangements and public consultation expertise to promote better policy making and improved service delivery. Pensions, welfare, and disability issues have featured in major public consultation exercises.
403. A mixture of focus groups, four regional events, and a leaflet and e-consultation have been used to obtain the views of disabled people and their representatives on two key proposals – the formation of an Office for Disability Issues and a National Forum for Organisations of Disabled People. Responding to the diverse range of information received, an advisory group of disabled people has been formed to advise ministers on the formation of a National Forum for Disabled People.
404. The welfare reform Green Paper – A new deal for disabled people: Empowering people to work has seen the production of a wide-ranging document which has generated considerable interest among customers and their representatives. Working with the Hansard Society, an online discussion forum to broaden public engagement has been developed.
405. The National Pensions Day on 18 March 2006 broke new ground for the Department with its consultations on proposals for future pensions reform.
This large-scale exercise was run on deliberative engagement principles which provided participants with facts and information and time to discuss and think critically about the issues before them, in order to come to informed views. This new form of consultation is widely recognised as promoting wider public engagement in the democratic process.
406. Over one thousand people participated on the day in six satellite-linked events in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The discussions of a representative cross-section of the public were heard directly by the whole Department for Work and Pensions ministerial team along with ministers from other departments and the three Pensions Commissioners.
407. Wider debate was promoted through a dedicated website which included background material, video links and an online survey based on materials used in the deliberative events. A ‘stakeholder toolkit’ was also provided which allowed organisations to run events to explore the Pensions Commission’s proposals.
408. The Department’s agencies and independent regulators also follow the principles of better regulation. For example, The Pensions Regulator moved work-based pension regulation towards a flexible and proportionate regulatory approach, targeting its resources on those areas where scheme members’ benefits are at greatest risk. In fulfilling its objectives of protecting members’ benefits, the Regulator has made use of enhanced information gathering powers to implement this risk-based approach.
409. The size of the form used to gather pensions scheme information has been reduced by 50 per cent. Subsequent returns can be completed online and are pre-populated so that it is necessary to enter only changes since the last return was submitted.
410. The Regulator and the Pension Protection Fund are both represented on the Department’s Better Regulation Stakeholder Group and have contributed to the Department’s work on the Administrative Burdens Reduction project and development of the simplification plan.
411. The Department continues to consider alternatives to regulation. An example of this is The Pensions Regulator’s issue of codes of practice providing practical guidelines on the requirements of pension legislation and setting out the standards of conduct and practice expected of those who must meet these requirements. The standards set out in the codes are consistent with how a well-run pension scheme would choose to meet its legal requirements.
412. The Health and Safety Commission/Executive, which is sponsored by the Department, publishes information about its better regulation performance in its annual report and accounts.94