Insanity, according to Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If that's true, Professor Chris Grey is really on to something when he says Brexit has driven the Tory party mad. He doesn't actually mention this particular point, but let's have a look at how the Tories have relentlessly pursued the deregulation agenda. A few days ago the business secretary Kemi Badenoch announced an “in-depth review into all regulators across the country” which will seek to “capitalise on our post-Brexit freedoms to bring about Smarter Regulation to the economy.” How often have we heard that over the last seven years?
To my certain knowledge, this is the 23rd ‘review’ of red tape the Tories have launched since 2010. We’ve had initiatives, challenges, blitzes, task forces, committees, and every sort of assessment you can imagine. None of them seem to have identified a single significant regulation that needs scrapping.
Her predecessor Jacob Rees Mogg was so frustrated at the business department's failure to produce any of these mysterious EU regulations burdening British industry that he was forced to appeal to readers of The Sun and The Daily Express. That also clearly failed because Badenoch has now launched yet another review.
Her latest announcement last Monday spoke of a "12-week consultation period as part of the wider Smarter Regulation Programme, which aims to bring about more effective and less burdensome regulations across the economy.” CityAM covered the story (a lot of the media didn’t, presumably out of weariness) by reporting that the government has committed to reviewing the UK’s sprawling regulatory system today in a bid to strip back red tape and find “post-Brexit regulatory advantages”
We are told that "39 percent of small businesses say red tape holds them back" and so Badenoch's department will "work to identify the changes to the regulatory landscape that will really make a difference to economic growth, as well as improving the outcomes for consumers and our environment."
Badenoch says, “I want us to use our Brexit freedoms to scrap unnecessary regulations that hold back firms and hamper growth.”
WARNING: DO NOT HOLD YOUR BREATH
I’m sure the 39% figure is right. You can always find individual businessmen and women who might want to dump one law or another, but you can’t develop policy on that basis. You cannot change regulations to benefit one or two cowboy firms which then disadvantage all the others in the same sector, or in other sectors.
You might also want to note the experience of Giles Wilkes, a one-time special adviser who received a batch of 'regulatory' issues sent to a trade body:
My *first day* as a spad, a well known business organisation slaps down on my desk a list of 100 regulatory problems from members. Hooray, I think: actual content.
— Giles Wilkes (@Gilesyb) January 7, 2021
Leafing through - about 98 were variants on "I find it tiresome having to make arrangements for pregnant staff" https://t.co/mJNkTrn4cU
You can be pretty sure this is what the 39% figure consists of.
It’s as if nobody in government can actually believe there are no ‘burdensome’ regulations and each new minister has to begin their own initiative or challenge in order to discover that there aren’t any. I am not sure why Badenoch hasn't gone back through the previous 22 reviews and looked at what they found - basically nothing. Certainly, nothing that would on balance give us an advantage.
As far as I can see British industry is desperate to align with EU rules. There will be far more pressure on her department for alignment than there is for divergence. And the companies calling for EU rules to be scrapped will for the most part be those who don't export. You can't have different rules for exporters otherwise, it would be chaos and if you only have one set of regulations, it is logical to keep them aligned to your largest export market.
The boss of Ford in Europe, Tim Slatter, speaking on the eve of the International Automotive Summit in London in June was just the latest to argue for alignment. He said: "It's really important that we maintain really good alignment to the European [regulatory environment] because that's where we build and sell most of our vehicles."
The same applies to all the car makers, chemical companies, and manufacturers of every kind who generate this country's wealth through exports.
This is the so-called 'Brussels effect' felt every day by firms the length and breadth of Britain - and elsewhere.
Businesses must be tearing their hair out. It is the constant threat of scrapping EU regulations or creating new UK regulations that are virtually identical to those produced by Brussels but sufficiently different to represent a non-tariff barrier to trade which actually would “hold back firms and hamper growth.”
Yet almost daily there are leading Brexiteers still talking about deregulating the UK economy. This is how Brexit has indeed driven the Tory party mad.
I suspect in a few years, the firms who want to see red tape cut back will be like the fishermen and farmers who supported Brexit in 2016. If any changes are actually made, EU red tape will be replaced by red, white, and blue tape.
