April 18th 2023
A new report has been launched today by the Regulatory Reform Group – The Purpose of Regulation, with input from the London Market Group, highlights how the lack of democratic oversight of regulators is holding back UK productivity and economic growth.
It offers a systematic appraisal of the UK’s regulators and, rather than advocating for a wave of deregulation, the group instead proposes a number of recommendations to help transition to a smarter and more democratically accountable approach to overseeing regulators, including:
- a new committee of both Houses of Parliament, dedicated to standing scrutiny of the UK’s regulators. Rather than duplicate the work of existing Select Committees, this Committee would “take a holistic view of the regulatory environment and understand the impact of regulatory performance on a series of overarching goals including consumer protection, growth and competitiveness, ESG, market stability and risk.”
Other recommendations include:
- a dedicated ‘Office for Oversight of Regulators’ in the Cabinet Office, tasked with managing and improving regulatory performance;
- introducing an open, two-way dialogue on regulatory implementation and performance;
- A new ‘accountability framework’, establishing a standardised set of metrics to measure the performance of the UK’s major economic regulators;
- implementing an outcomes-based approach to future regulation.
Caroline Wagstaff, CEO of the London Market Group, said:
“We are delighted to be supporting the efforts of the Regulatory Reform Group. We have been advocating strongly and consistently for greater accountability of regulators through our ongoing work on the Financial Services and Markets Bill. We believe that the Treasury should be setting out specific metrics to hold them accountable, that the regulators should be reporting consistently and that Parliament should be marking their homework. All of this feeds into the wider non-sectoral campaign being run by the parliamentary Regulatory Reform Group, and the report’s inclusion of a case study on the UK ILS market highlights what happens when rules and behaviours are not in sync.”
Vicky Ford, Member of Parliament for Chelmsford, which has the largest representation of insurance business outside the City, said:
“Significant failures of regulators, across many of our key-growth sectors demonstrate the pressing need for greater oversight of our regulators, so that we can have a systemic approach to managing risk. Decisions taken by regulators today have a long-lasting impact on our economy and competitiveness especially in key-growth sectors but many of our regulators are sluggish, unresponsive and lack transparency. Parliament needs to play a much more significant role in scrutinising performance as well as providing greater direction and oversight, particularly in new and emerging sectors where delegation of responsibilities can be complex.”
The parliamentary Regulatory Reform Group is chaired by Bim Afolami, with members Lord Andrew Tyrie, Richard Fuller, Vicky Ford, Alun Cairns, Stephen Hammond, James Wild, Sir Robert Buckland, and Mark Garnier. The report was written after consultation with senior government figures, regulators themselves and the cross-sectoral Business Advisory Council, chaired by Tracy Blackwell, CEO of Pension Insurance Corporation.
Please find the report at this link.
Contacts
- Victoria Sisson Luther Pendragon 07941 294872
