{"id":6110,"date":"2011-07-04T19:37:15","date_gmt":"2011-07-04T18:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=6110"},"modified":"2011-07-04T19:37:57","modified_gmt":"2011-07-04T18:37:57","slug":"should-regulation-be-light-touch-or-right-touch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=6110","title":{"rendered":"Should regulation be light touch or right touch?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve spent most of my working life involved in regulatory debates.<\/p>\n<p>This started when I worked at the Communications Workers Union which organises staff in the telecommunications and postal industries since both telecoms and posts are regulated. It has continued since I took early retirement from the CWU through my membership of the Communications Consumer Panel, Postwatch and Consumer Focus. Indeed, later this week, I&#8217;ll be lecturing on the future of regulation to an international audience at a course in London.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;m particularly interested in the efforts of the current Coalition Government to reduce regulation and I&#8217;ve been looking at the Cabinet Office web site called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.redtapechallenge.cabinetoffice.gov.uk\/about\/\">The Red Tape Challenge<\/a>. Obviously regulation can be an excessive burden on industry and at its worst it increases costs and reduces innovation. But the banking crisis of the last few years shows the enormous price that we all pay if regulation is weak or inadequate.<\/p>\n<p>The Government has a very simplistic attitude to regulation, encapsulated by its policy of &#8216;one in, one in&#8217;.\u00a0 It is not the absolute number of regulations that matter; it is the nature of those regulations and whether they are needed and efficacious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve spent most of my working life involved in regulatory debates. This started when I worked at the Communications Workers Union which organises staff in the telecommunications and postal industries since both telecoms and posts are regulated. It has continued since I took early retirement from the CWU through my membership of the Communications Consumer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,12,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs","category-consumer-matters","category-social-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6110"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6585,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6110\/revisions\/6585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}