The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has launched a 12-week call for evidence regarding where regulators are working well and where they could improve, as part of a bid to “cut red tape and bureaucracy”.
The initiative seeks views on regulatory agility, proportionality, predictability and consistency of approach, as well as whether there are any further steps Government can take to reform the existing stock of regulation on the UK Statute book (both Retained EU Law and wider regulations).
DBT reasoned there is considerable criticism of regulation, which falls into three principal categories:
• the regulatory landscape is a crowded space, with too many regulators (90 across the UK) having too many duties to trade-off against each other, leading to inconsistency and complexity;
• regulators are overly risk averse and focus too heavily on process, at the expense of delivering the best outcomes; and
• 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.
Business secretary Kemi Badenoch, 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.”
The call for evidence is part of the wider Smarter Regulation Programme. This includes the more specific review of Ofgem, Ofwat and Ofcom, as well as the recent consultation on introducing a growth duty for larger regulators.
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