BEIS Launches Proposals For Regulation Reform

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The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy has launched a consultation on proposals to reform the UK framework for better regulation.

Areas examined in the consultation include:

  • the adoption of a less-codified, common law approach to regulation
  • a review of the role of regulators, especially around competition and innovation
  • delegation of more discretion to regulators to achieve regulatory objectives in a more agile and flexible way counterbalanced by increased accountability and scrutiny
  • streamlining the process of assessment of impacts
  • moving to earlier scrutiny of impact assessments and evaluation of existing regulation
  • consideration of options on measuring the impact of regulation
  • re-introduction of regulatory offsetting
  • baselining the UK’s regulatory burden

The proposals are based on those set out in the independent report from the Taskforce on Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform (TIGRR Report), led by MPs Theresa Villiers, Iain Duncan Smith and George Freeman. The TIGRR Report supported the return of the one-in, x-out regime (OIXO). However, in the consultation document, BEIS notes that any new regime would have to consider competing objectives, offering a plausible quantification of costs and benefits, while also being sufficiently simple and workable. It would also have to respond to criticisms from the National Audit Office that OIXO ignored the wider social, economic and environmental costs and benefits of regulation.

The consultation is open until 1 October 2021.