Johnson revives ‘one-in, two-out’ rule to curb red tape
BORIS JOHNSON has endorsed plans to tear up red tape by resurrecting the Coalition’s rule that two “unnecessary” regulations must be scrapped for every one introduced by his Government.
This week, the Government will publish a consultation that is expected to set out proposals for a “one-in-two-out” rule on red tape, to “seize the opportunities” of the UK’s independence from the EU.
The consultation, signed off by Mr Johnson’s Cabinet committee on better regulation, is also expected to set out plans for faster reviews of new rules, two years after they are introduced, to ensure they are not burdensome for businesses and consumers or costing too much. It could additionally lead to some new regulations having to be signed off by a committee of Cabinet ministers before they can be introduced to Parliament.
The ideas feature in a report by Mr Johnson’s Taskforce on Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform, comprising Conservative backbenchers Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Theresa Villiers and George Freeman. Last week, he told John Penrose, the Government’s competition tsar, who has also proposed a one-in, two-out regime, that he supported the proposal.
A Government source said: “Now is the right time to modernise our approach to regulation, as we recover from Covid and seize the opportunities of being an independent nation. The last thing we want is for red tape to hold our businesses back from new innovations and opportunities.”
In their report, Sir Iain, Ms Villiers and Mr Freeman said Brexit meant “we can adapt regulation to reflect our national interest” because the country’s decisions on regulations “are no longer dependent on lengthy negotiations and compromises with 27 other countries”.
Their report stated that the country’s regulatory regime would be “sharpened by the discipline of ‘one in, two out’, to temper the natural urge for new rules to respond to perceived new problems”.
A similar regime was introduced in David Cameron’s Coalition government, which said the move resulted in Whitehall departments “removing around £963million more in business burdens than they introduced” in 2011 and 2012. “Now it is possible to apply this to laws we inherited while in the EU as well,” a Government source said.
Currently, new regulations are reviewed five years after they are introduced. The consultation is expected to set out the Government’s intention to carry out “much more swift and rigorous” reviews after two years instead. Rules found to undermine their purpose can then be adjusted or repealed “before the impact on business, consumers or the taxpayer becomes too great.”
Ministers also want to introduce tougher scrutiny of regulations before they are implemented to stop the introduction of rules that impose excessive burdens on businesses and consumers.
The Government’s policy on international travel defies all logic. From tomorrow, the traffic light system was finally due to become a little more coherent, with the doublevaccinated exempt from the burden of quarantining at home for 10 days if arriving from an amber list destination. Yet ministers have thrown the system into chaos by excluding arrivals from France at just 48 hours’ notice. Tens of thousands of holidaymakers are believed to be affected, and the travel industry is warning of yet more carnage to come.
Ministers are worried about the spread of the beta variant of the virus in France, and the possibility that it may override the protections afforded by the vaccines. Yet that is by no means established. The Government has once again retreated to decision-making based on the most pessimistic reading of the data, with little apparent regard to the consequences.
If the beta variant is indeed circulating strongly in France, rather than in its overseas territories as some maintain, what is to stop it spreading elsewhere in Europe, to other amber list destinations? The upshot of the Government’s decision is that nobody can plan a holiday abroad this summer with any confidence that it will not be upset at the last minute by some sudden and arbitrary rule change.
The country cannot afford to remain stuck in this state of limbo. Tomorrow will see the lifting of the lockdown legal restrictions in England, on what some are calling Freedom Day. Yet, despite the evident effectiveness of the vaccines in reducing hospital admissions and deaths, a rise in cases has scared the Government into persisting with onerous guidance and advice. The test and trace system, meanwhile, is still condemning hundreds of thousands of healthy people to self-isolation, even those who have received two doses of the jab.
The costs of this policy of extreme caution will not be small. There is, in practice, no chance of eliminating Covid. We have to learn to live with the virus, or at home and abroad face the prospect of restrictions returning intermittently for the foreseeable future.