| New briefing paper on regulation |
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| Written by Tom Clougherty | |
| Saturday, 23 June 2007 | |
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The ASI's regulation supremos, Keith Boyfield and Tim Ambler, have published a new briefing paper as part of our Regulatory Monitor project, entitled Stemming the growth of UK regulatory agencies. It's available as a PDF here , and is well worth a read. The paper notes the "explosion in the growth of economic regulators" since 1997, which reflects the government's view that regulation should deliver social and environmental objectives rather than playing a purely economic role. Unfortunately this new consumerist agenda has not been a success – it has proved hard to define in legal language and little thought has been put into how these social and environmental objectives are to be funded. This has imposed significant costs on businesses and consumers. While the authors stress that "all markets need some degree of regulation in order to work as markets" they advocate following the example set by the Financial Standards Agency and adopting a light touch, principles-based approach to regulation for the economy as a whole. The ultimate objective of this approach is to merge all the existing regulatory agencies into a single Fair Trade Authority, which would be formally responsible to parliament and which would intervene only to ensure free, competitive markets. A great deal of the regulation aimed at protecting the consumer could be left to the courts, while the greater use of market mechanisms, such as mandatory insurance, would serve to improve standards like health and safety in the workplace. The briefing makes it clear that a better regulatory regime is well within our grasp, so long as the political will is there to pursue it.
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