- Conservative Government launches review of regulators to seek
out post-Brexit regulatory advantages
- There are around 90 regulators in the UK, costing almost £5bn
per year to operate, covering most sectors of the economy
- New review aims to uncover what works well, what can be
improved in regulators’ agility and performance, and how
complexity and duplication can be reduced
The Conservative Government is today announcing an in-depth
review of how regulators work.
We will be leading a 12-week call for evidence to hear from
businesses, their advisers, and the regulators themselves, as
well as consumers and users of regulated goods and services.
There are 90 regulators in the UK, and 39 per cent of small
businesses say red tape holds them back. So we are undertaking a
major piece of work to identify the changes to the regulatory
landscape that will really make a difference to economic growth,
as well as improving the outcomes for consumers and our
environment.
The findings will inform every part of the Smarter Regulation
Programme across government, to deliver more effective,
responsive and accountable regulation.
, Secretary of State for
Business and Trade, said:
“I want us to use our Brexit freedoms to scrap unnecessary
regulations that hold back firms and hamper growth. It’s clear
that the regulators that enforce the rules can also sometimes be
a blocker to businesses, so our review will seek to root out the
bad practices with the aim of making companies’ lives easier and
reducing costs for consumers.”
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
- As part of the Smarter Regulation Programme, the Department
for Business and Trade is carrying out an in depth review of how
regulators work. We will be leading a 12 week call for evidence
to hear from businesses, their advisers, the regulators
themselves and consumers and users of regulated goods and
services.
- The first and principal focus of this call for evidence is to
understand what works well and what could be improved in how
regulators operate to deliver for the sectors they serve. It
seeks views on regulatory agility; proportionality;
predictability and consistency of approach. Second, it asks
whether there are any further steps we can take to reform the
existing stock of regulation on the UK Statute book (both
Retained EU Law and wider regulations)
- The findings will inform every part of the Smarter Regulation
Programme across government, to deliver more effective,
responsive and accountable regulation.
- Many businesses, consumer groups and other stakeholders have
been vocal in their concern over the operation and enforcement of
regulation by independent regulators. Broadly, these criticisms
fall into three categories:
- The regulatory landscape is a crowded space, with too many
regulators having too many duties to trade-off against each
other. These trade-offs often involve normative or “fairness”
judgements, meaning consistency across regulators and a clear
steer from HMG on what good looks like is essential.
- Regulator behaviour, risk appetite and overall performance is
not as it should be. Stakeholders argue that regulators are
overly risk averse and focus too heavily on process, and that
this is at the expense of delivering the best outcomes.
- Regulator powers and accountability have not moved in tandem,
in part because of the increased decision-making power of some
regulators now that decisions are taken at a UK- (not EU-) level.
- This work is complementary to existing work in train,
including the more specific review of Ofgem, Ofwat and Ofcom -
which also forms part of the Smarter Regulation Programme.
