What both left and right get wrong about regulation

A good regulatory environment is essential for investment. That doesn't mean a low regulatory environment or a harsh but failing one.

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When David Cameron’s Coalition government promised a bonfire of regulation, they meant it. And that bonfire spread. It spread to our polluted rivers and seas. It spread to our housing market where a ‘wild west’ approach has left renters insecure and in substandard housing. Most damningly it spread to building standards and has been explicitly linked to the deaths caused by the Grenfell Tower tragedy.

Where regulation wasn’t ditched it wasn’t well enforced. The mechanisms for doing so were eroded, the staffing cut, the expertise pushed out and the environment was changed insidiously and over time so even when a regulator might want to pursue enforcement they were either actively or quietly discouraged from doing so. So the paperwork was still generated by those businesses trying to do the right thing, while others who either had the resources to get around the law or the chutzpah to simply ignore the law on the balance of probability that compliance would cost more than the dwindling cost of fines or the unlikely event of a prosecution.

On the other side of the ledger, I am a small business owner. In fact, I own and run two – a political consultancy and a theatre company. So, I know what it is like to be on the other side of regulations and their administration. And unless you are a very specific type of lawyer, you have not set up your business in order to fill in forms and jump through hoops made of red tape. Any time spent not just complying with the regulations but filling in forms proving that you have complied with them is time you are not spending on building your business and servicing your customers.