Institute board response to Government White Paper on Regulation

The Institute of Regulation (IoR) board welcomes the Government’s White Paper on Regulation published today, Thursday 16 May.

We agree that good regulation promotes a healthy economy and healthy society. We welcome the Government’s commitment to supporting and improving UK regulation, including through its ten principles of regulation.

We nonetheless take a broader view of regulation and good regulatory practice than is proposed in the White Paper. Standards, guidance and incentives are rightly part of a modern regulatory toolkit, and we will encourage all regulators, and not just those mentioned in the White Paper to review the principles and the other proposals in the White Paper to improve their work, including by debating the five talking points we set out below.

The Institute of Regulation board particularly welcome the Government’s wish to establish regulation as a profession and to explore improved training in regulatory theory and practice for all those working in UK regulation. The Institute of Regulation was established in 2021 with the core purpose of providing professional development for regulators and promoting good practice in UK regulation. We provide training and events to promote this professionalisation, and we look forward to working with the Government and all UK regulators to extend these opportunities to help improve regulation across the country.

Chair of the Institute of Regulation, Marcial Boo, said:

“The Government rightly acknowledges the importance of good regulation to the UK economy. Well-designed, smart regulation can enable innovation and foster improvement, provide stability to businesses and public services, and protect users and consumers. The Institute of Regulation works with economic and business regulators, and with the regulators of public services and professionals, to help them to share good practice and improve their work. All these regulators can benefit from the greater professionalisation, consistency and training that the Government proposes to help improve UK regulation.”

In considering the White Paper, the IoR board offer five talking points arising from the Government’s White Paper which the Institute of Regulation’s members may wish to consider:

1. The White Paper focuses on economic regulation and its impact on business. Do the same issues apply to regulators in other sectors and to the impact of regulation on users and consumers?

Good regulation promotes the interests of both business and citizens. The Government’s focus on innovation, investment and growth is welcome, as good regulation benefits both our economy and our society. But could regulation be more broadly defined?

The White Paper helpfully acknowledges the importance of regulatory safeguards, environmental standards, and consumer protection. Could the White Paper go further to address the wider role of regulation to protect citizens as consumers and users of services? Regulation has an important role to prevent harm and protect those who may be vulnerable. This means, for example, preventing unsafe products and medicines from being sold, and unsafe professionals from practising, while making the regulatory process as unobtrusive as possible.

Regulatory professionals and experts will be keen to strengthen regulation, ensure consistency of regulatory approaches and capitalise on good regulatory practice even if they are not economic regulators of business. Indeed, many public and private sector bodies work in the same sectors, such as healthcare or tertiary education. How might these sectors benefit from smarter regulation? And how should regulators play a role to help public services to improve as well as support economic growth?

2. How will the 10 new principles of regulation deliver a ‘world-class’ regulation as a service?

The Government’s 10 new principles of regulation cover the fundamentals of good regulatory practice and provide a clear summary approach. Do regulatory professionals and experts see any overlaps or gaps in these principles, compared to other regulatory models and their own practice? How can the 10 principles help all UK regulators to collaborate and offer peer support and shared learning with each other, such that regulatory practice improves over time?

The White Paper identifies that those countries with leading regulatory practice are supported by effective networks of regulatory professionals and experts. The Institute of Regulation was founded to enable regulators to learn from and support each other in improving regulatory practices. How can regulators ensure they are maximising the value from such peer support networks?

The Government invites regulators to adopt a new mindset, shifting from ‘no because’ to ‘yes if’. This is likely to be welcomed by forward-thinking regulators. What are the implications of adopting this mindset on regulatory culture and practice?

In cultivating a culture of service, the Government seeks to ensure that regulation is insight driven and considerate to the needs of businesses and citizens. Many regulatory professionals and experts will welcome this focus and may already be experienced in deploying service design techniques to simplify and improve the regulatory experience. How might all regulators benefit from the proposed additional investment in skills and tools to ensure that UK regulators are adequately equipped to match the Government’s service-oriented ambitions?

3. The Government proposes a new Regulatory Council and ‘one-stop shop’ for UK regulation. How can they be constructed to maximise their potential and usefulness to those regulated?

The White Paper introduces a new Regulatory Council to improve Government and regulator engagement, in recognition of the collective value of regulators. This will be an opportunity for regulators and regulatory networks to contribute to informed debate on the nature and shape of smarter regulation in the UK.

The Government will also establish a regulation portal, incorporating a register of regulators. This is likely to be welcomed by regulatory professionals and experts on the basis that it will improve transparency for regulators and the regulated alike.

In establishing a ‘one-stop shop’, the Government intends to make it simpler and easier to access regulatory guidance. In practice, this will require the Government to grapple with a longstanding challenge to ensure that secondary legislation, guidance and other documentation from 50 or more regulators working across sectors can be synthesised or listed in a user-friendly interface for businesses, professionals and the public. The products of the ‘one-stop shop’ must remain up-to-date and easy to interpret too, including potentially by the courts. How best can this be done? And how can the UK regulatory community help the Government in achieving its laudable goal to improve understanding and the simplification of regulations, for everyone?

The Government wishes rightly to ensure that regulators focus not on their own convenience, but on those regulated and those who benefit from regulation. This means designing regulations based on user-centric scenarios to maximise benefit and minimise adverse impact. How can regulators learn from each other, deploying the best regulatory practice consistently, coherently and well?

4. How might the Government’s proposals improve regulatory guidance, duties and accountability?

The UK’s 100+ regulators work in vastly different sectors and with different histories and legislative underpinning. The Government understandably wishes to improve consistency of regulatory practice, as well as to focus regulators on policy priorities. This has the potential positively to strengthen regulators’ accountability.

The Government proposes several ways to strengthen accountability links to regulators, including the expansion of the Growth Duty, the introduction of the Growth Duty Performance Framework, and a new impact assessment framework, cost-benefit analysis and monitoring of statutory duties. These will all impact regulators in distinct ways but have the potential to improve the transparency of regulation.

How can regulators address these challenges and new requirements in ways which are consistent, easy for those regulated to understand, and without generating a significant management or cost burden on the regulators affected?

5. How does the Government expect to drive up the quality of regulation?

The Government proposes to explore establishing regulation as a profession, and to invest in training for those working in regulation to improve their consistency and knowledge of good practice. This will be welcomed by regulatory professionals, as it is by the board members of the Institute of Regulation.

The Institute already provides introductory, fundamental and ‘masterclass’ professional development to members, alongside a profession-wide jobs board and eight ‘special interest groups’ to improve practice in particular areas of regulatory work, as well a range of conversations specifically designed to enhance awareness and practice in good regulation and increase the professionalism of our members.

What else can the Institute do, and what support can the Government provide, directly through its strengthened Regulatory Policy Committee, to help improve the quality of UK regulation?

Notes to editors

The Institute of Regulation (IoR) is a membership organisation. We’re a professional network, providing professional development in regulation and promoting good practice in regulation. We believe good regulation is essential for a thriving economy and society. We aspire to become the home of good regulation.

The Institute established as a membership organisation in 2021.

Today we’re a thriving professional and expert community:

• over 550 regulatory experts in our membership network

• over 30 corporate members, regulators based in the UK and Channel Islands, encompassing between a quarter and a third of all UK regulators

• over 100 individual members

• a rapidly growing network of affiliate members from business and third sector organisations

The Institute of Regulation grew from an informal network of non-financial regulators who began meeting in 2019. We are a charitable not-for-profit company, registered with Companies House (13628098) and currently applying to the Charity Commission for charitable status.

For further information, please contact our membership team membership@ioregulation.org or Louisa Dale, director@ioregulation.org.