Tim Ambler and Eamonn Butler review the government's plans to reform financial regulation, and argue for a more streamlined approach that does not inhibit competition by smothering new market entrants with costly regulatory requirements.

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London as a case study for a spontaneously planned future.

The Town and Country Planning Act has failed. Restrictions on development, the Green Belt and the nationalized planning permission system have all helped to create a national housing crisis. In this report, an advance paper from the forthcoming Adam Smith Institute book A Manifesto for London, Tom Papworth argues for a radical reform of the British planning system, replacing it with a local, contractual and pluralist system to allow development whilst conserving areas of natural beauty and national heritage.

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The government is spending enormous sums of money on renewable energy. This report assesses the economic and energy security cases for renewable energy subsidies, and finds that there is no prospect that renewable energy will be able to provide a substantial amount of Britain's energy needs.

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In this response to the Vickers report, financial experts Tim Ambler and Miles Saltiel argue that the report's findings fail to address the root causes of the financial crisis and would create another layer of bureaucracy. Instead, the government should allow the creation of new "Trust Banks" that would be safely run, reduce arguments for protection of riskier banks, and introduce new competition to the high street.

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In a follow up his last report on the Tobin Tax, Adam Baldwin assesses the impact of the European Commission's Financial Transaction Tax on Britain. He draws on the EC's impact assessment and independent research and concludes that it would wipe out derivatives trading in the City, hurt economic growth and increase market volatility.

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This briefing paper, by ASI fellows Tim Ambler and Keith Boyfield, notes the extraordinary growth of the UK's regulatory agencies since 1997 and the deleterious consequences for the UK economy. They argue that the UK's regulators should first be restricted to their original, purely economic role, and subsequently merged into a single, competition-focused Office of Fair Trading.

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