Alan Blanchard considers whether reducing the number of regulators is the solution to driving growth and highlights the need for innovation in publishing regulation.
A recent article by Andy Haldane (former Chief Economist at the Bank of England) in the Financial Times raised some very interesting points about the need to deregulate.
The article's title "How to dismantle the UK's regulatory Tower of Babel" gives away the ending somewhat. In the course of his argument, Mr Haldane made a couple of points that I think are worthy of further discussion.
The article decries the "more than 90 distinct regulators" here in the UK as being way too many.
In 2024 the Institute for Government counted the number as 116. The Smarter Regulation Directorate within the Department for Business and Trade has the number at 130.
I myself would have the widest possible definition, which then encompasses areas such as governing bodies in sport and industry associations that set standards, putting the number closer to 200.
Andy Haldane proposes halving his figure of 90 as a starting point. In fact the starting point should be understanding the regulators in scope, quite a task as the new government will be creating new regulators during this term and may well take further action with regulators in its drive for unlocking growth (see recent changes at CMA and FOS).
The rationale behind reducing regulation is to stimulate growth. However, a recent article in Civil Service World questioned how some regulators (such as Ofsted) can do that and reinforced that innovation and efficiency are the key drivers. In fact, many regulators already have a focus on supporting growth.
Which brings us on to the possible approaches that could support regulating for growth. Making it easier for businesses to find, understand and use regulation should be the key focus. Somewhat inevitably AI is given as the solution to streamline rule books and automate compliance. However, while the "millions of pages" of rules are locked away in PDFs, no AI will be good enough to assure a user that they have the right answer.
Only when we have regulatory content as enriched data will we unlock the full potential of AI assistance both for regulated and regulator; and the clamour for deregulation will be replaced by the notion of better regulation.
For more information on unlocking regulation, see our recent webinar with the Institute of Regulation. We will be discussing this topic further at Digital Leaders Public Sector AI Week in early March.
Alan Blanchard is TSO's Business Development Director and has more than 26 years of experience in the publishing, regulatory, and fintech world.
