The laziest attitude to strike in politics is to rail against red tape and regulation. Form-filling? Busybody, unelected bureaucrats interfering with our ancient freedoms and obstructing entrepreneurial wealth creation? It’s easy to utter our disdain, especially if the regulation has anything to do with the EU – the “corpse” to which Britain was shackled and from which it is now liberated. Hence the bill currently in the House of Lords, launched by Jacob Rees-Mogg during his stint as one of our shortest-lived secretaries of state for business, to end in one stroke a swath of regulation and the tyranny of EU bureaucrats. About 3,700 regulations that emanated from the darkest city in Europe – Brussels – are to be scrapped by the end of the year.
Red tape for red tape’s sake? In truth, there is no such thing. Regulation is the foundation of our civilisation. I am delighted that older cars must have MOTs, that employees have a right to paid holiday, that the drugs the doctor prescribes are safe, that lead in paint is prohibited, that the pesticides used in gardens won’t kill us, that the water we drink is clean and that restaurant and pub kitchens are regularly checked. So too, although they will never admit as much, are the ardent deregulators and apostles of the retained EU law (revocation and reform) bill set to revoke many of these “burdens” and “obstacles” to our freedom and prosperity.
Not only is this obsession lazy thinking, it is wrong. If you believe in the indissoluble link between liberal democracy and capitalism, you cannot be against regulation in principle. We elect our MPs to improve our lives – not to do nothing. Every piece of regulation on the statute book, even that associated with the EU, went through a democratic process and was a response to citizens’ concerns. The now doomed EU working time directive, for example, limiting the working week to 48 hours and requiring 11-hour rest breaks between shifts, went through the UK parliament, the EU Council of Ministers (all elected) and the European parliament. It does not represent the jackboot of EU autocracy: it reflects the preferences and concerns of British and European citizens. It is what happens in democracies.
Nor is regulation the obstacle to wealth creation and cause of economic stasis. Regulation, especially in the fourth industrial revolution through which we are now living, is a prime competitive asset. Consumers at every level – from the sophisticated business to the time-pressed online shopper – want the reassurance that they are not going to be ripped off, that what they buy won’t hurt them and will work. Of course the fertilisers in our fields should not be able to kill us and the interest rate margins on credit cards should not be usurious – but the same trust is even more important for hi-tech products and digital services. The hi-tech startup with a new drug that, say, relieves Parkinson’s disease or a piece of kit that diminishes the toxicity of car exhausts will grow faster if the company can assure its buyers that its products have been tested and have passed the regulatory standard. They will grow even faster if they can assure European and American buyers they conform to European and American standards.
One of the best recent examples was the emergence of Vodafone as a multinational. EU membership allowed British mobile phone standards to transmute into EU standards, which became global standards. No British company will now ever be able to reproduce what Vodafone achieved. Brexit has condemned every British hi-tech startup, if it wants to become a global player, to end up being bought by a larger American or European company and then conforming to EU or American regulatory standards. The last chance they had was to retain some conformity with EU regulation, but now that is to be torched too. Britain’s destiny is to be a bit player as part of EU and American companies’ supply chains.
But Rees-Mogg does not live in today’s world. On my desk I have his extraordinary The Victorians: Twelve Titans Who Forged Britain. His aim is to paint a picture of a century of progress propelled by hyper-hard-working, morally courageous individuals who bequeathed us a perfect constitution and a model of how to drive Britain forward from which we must learn. In this Ladybird history there is little or no hint of the abject squalor and distress that Dickens wrote about so compellingly and which the Chartists and the early trade unionists fought against in their millions. And the idea that, in 1900, anyone could describe the British constitution as a model for others, with its House of Lords populated by more than 400 Tory peers prepared to block any progressive government – and which David Lloyd George, Herbert Asquith and Clement Attlee had to navigate their way round – is preposterous. In 2010, David Cameron was the first Conservative prime minister to face a House of Lords without an embedded Tory majority. A model?
But then Rees-Mogg is preposterous and so is the retained EU law bill. It is amazing that, despite the financial crash, the emergence of the gig economy and the sewage swilling around our rivers and our beaches, that anyone can call for more deregulation without being laughed out of court. Of course there are some poorly drafted regulations that produce perverse and unwanted effects – Boris Johnson built his early career from lampooning them, although virtually none of his descriptions stood up to close inspection. But that means the regulation should be redrafted rather than the intent mocked and the principle binned.
There are signs that the opposition, business and civil society are at last being less cowed by the Brexit bullies. The greatest impact of scrapping EU regulation will be on farming, wildlife and forestry, prompting warnings from the National Farmers Union and the Wildlife Trusts alike, while the Institute of Directors and docile, don’t-rock-the-boat CBI think that to do so much so quickly is courting disaster and upsetting business investment. Labour, at last sensing there are votes in leaning into the EU and with it economic rationality, is proposing a “sovereignty amendment” to the bill – the government should declare what regulations it wants to scrap and why, instead of reserving the future of the environment, work and our safety to ministerial discretion.
Insiders say the bill is performative virtue signalling by Sunak – a sop to extreme Brexiters to get their agreement to a deal on the Northern Ireland protocol from which at the last he will retreat. Maybe. The trouble is that the prime minister believes in this “scrap regulation” cant too. The retained EU law bill may be a watershed – a moment when the truth dawned. We need good regulations – the precondition of a good society. As Victorian Britain, beyond the Ladybird fantasies of Rees-Mogg, so amply demonstrated.
• Will Hutton is an Observer columnist
