In the words of the UK government:
“Regulation is essential to the functioning of the economy. It can help ensure fair competition, consumer confidence and can also create the right conditions to foster growth and innovation. Regulation can also support societal outcomes such as protecting the environment...It plays an important role in keeping the public safe and protecting vulnerable people. But we also know that poorly designed regulations, administrative systems and compliance mechanisms can lead to costs without these benefits”.
It is therefore important that government and the public can assess what is good, or not so good, about our regulatory regime so that it can be improved where possible.
Getting to grips with regulation
Those who want the regime to be better first need to understand how it currently works (or is meant to work) and this briefing provides an overview of the key building blocks that make up the architecture of the UK’s regulatory regime for that purpose.
This is, perhaps inevitably, a complex subject - regulation impacts many areas of our lives, there are many regulators, many regulatory objectives, and a variety of regulatory approaches.
To say that the UK regulatory regime has been ‘designed’ is itself a simplification; it has in fact evolved piecemeal over centuries and changes to improve the regulatory architecture have only been made periodically.
What the briefing covers
This relatively short briefing cannot cover everything, but we hope that it will help to demystify what may otherwise seem to be a daunting subject.
We begin with a brief look at what is meant by ‘regulation’ and efforts to define what is ‘good’ regulation and then consider some of the key components of the UK’s regulatory architecture - who are the rule makers, how are the rules made and enforced and how are regulators held to account.
We have avoided using jargon where possible, but note that:
- laws and regulations made by Parliament are known as 'Acts of Parliament', 'primary legislation' or 'statute';
- 'delegated legislation' (ie, laws and regulations made by others under authority of Parliament) includes 'secondary legislation' and the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, and secondary legislation includes 'statutory instruments'; and
- 'legislation' includes both primary and secondary legislation.