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Improving UK's government regulation |
by David Glass, Pritchard Englefield law firm
The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 is due to come into
force on 8th January 2007 and is designed to reduce the burden on UK
businesses coming from the increasing weight of UK central Government
and local Government regulations.
The Act is the result of the Hampton Review which reported in 2005 and
recommended the merger of 31 regulatory bodies into 7 new bodies by
2009. The process of such mergers has already started. Regulatory
bodies (such as the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition
Commission) will be expected to observe the Hampton Principles
including:
1. Sharing best practices, eliminating unnecessary forms and ensuring
that businesses do not have to give the same piece of information more
than once to regulatory organisations;
2. embedding a risk-based approach across their entire regulatory
regime and using risk assessments to target genuine risks to consumers,
employees and the environment, rather than targeting minor breaches of
the rules; and,
3. systematically evaluating advice to assess whether it is benefiting the necessary businesses.
In order to support this new approach, the UK Government will have
power to promote secondary legislation with a view to imposing reforms
on regulatory bodies. There is naturally bound to be a worry about
democratic accountability where the UK Government is given such
sweeping powers to enforce “Better Regulation” but the Government will
be subject to statutory guidelines in the way it exercises such powers
and, in any event, such powers will not extend to imposing, abolishing
or bearing any tax, creating any new criminal offence, or authorising
forcible entry, search or seizure or compelling the giving of evidence.
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A statutory code of conduct for regulators will be developed and a
Local Better Regulation Office will be established to implement the
Hampton recommendations at local level (which will complement the
Better Regulation Executive at central level).
Five economic sectorial regulators in the utilities sectors – OFWAT,
OFGEM, OFCOM, ORR and POSTCOMM – will be outside the scope of the new
Government power because they are very much subject to their own
specific regime, but the broad sweep of central and local Government
regulation will be covered by the Act.
In exercising their powers, Government ministers are required to ensure
that regulatory functions are exercised in compliance with the
following principles:-
1. that regulatory activities should be carried out in ways which are
transparent, accountable, proportionate and consistent; and
2. that regulatory activities are targeted only at cases in which action is needed.
Fine words but at least the UK Government seems to be responding to
concerns about the burden of red tape and the regulatory obstacles
placed in the way of UK businesses operating effectively.
© December 2006 David Glass
All Rights Reserved.
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