From 1 September, the government will be operating a “one-in, one-out” system with regard to regulations affecting businesses and third sector organisations.
This means that when ministers want to introduce new regulations that impose costs on a business or the third sector, they have to first identify current regulations with an equivalent value that can be removed.
The idea is to capture the net cost to business of any given measure so that the “benefits to business will be offset against the costs to business”.
The new rule will only apply initially to domestic legislation but the government says it intends to expand the system “in due course”.
To further ensure that “the costs of red tape are being properly addressed”, the government has also agreed a set of “principles of regulation” that departments must apply when considering new rules.
In addition, it has asked the independent Regulatory Policy Committee to act as an external scrutineer to look at the evidence and analysis supporting new regulatory proposals, prior to policy decisions being made. It will also analyse proposals for the implementation of EU legislation.
Businesses and the public in general can have a go at telling the government which “onerous regulations” they think should be removed or changed by going onto a website called Your Freedom, launched last month by the Deputy Prime Minster.
On it, the government asks, among other things: “Which regulations do you think should be removed or changed to make running your business or organisation as simple as possible?”
The press release announcing these new measures adds, predictably, that the government intends to adopt “a rigorous approach to tackling EU regulations and gold plating” so that when European rules are transposed into UK law, “it is done without putting British business at a competitive disadvantage to other European-based companies”.
For more information, go to: http://nds.coi.gov.uk
To access “Your Freedom” website, go to: http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/