The Government is to review the activities of all 90 regulatory bodies in the UK, which 40% of firms say are holding them back.
A 12-week call for evidence will seek views of businesses, consumers and regulators to establish areas that are working well as well as where regulators could improve. It comes as part of the wider Smarter Regulation Programme, which aims to bring about more effective and less burdensome regulations across the economy.
The review will 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.
Businesses have made clear that burdensome regulations have hampered growth, which is behind the action, says Kemi Badenoch, Secretary of State for Business and Trade. “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.”
The 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.
Many businesses, consumer groups and other industry leaders have expressed 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 meaning consistency across regulators and a clear direction on what good looks like is essential.
- Regulator behaviour, risk appetite and overall performance is not as it should be. Businesses/industry groups 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.
