Better Regulation
Richard Gregg
Defra Delivery Transformation
Programme Manager
Overview – Policy Objectives
Defra’s central purpose is to secure a healthy environment in which we and
future generations prosper.
Several Departmental Strategic Objectives support this including:
•
A thriving farming and food sector with an improving net environmental impact;
•
A sustainable, secure and healthy food supply;
•
An economy and a society that are resilient to environmental risk;
•
Supporting strong rural communities;
•
A respected department delivering efficient and high quality services and outcomes.
Purpose of Regulation
To deliver policy outcomes (economic, social and
environmental) by changing the behaviours of
individuals and business
• By moderating how things are done
• By stopping some things happening
• By encouraging people to do things they would
not normally do
The Defra Network
Increasing degree of independence
Non Departmental
Public Bodies
Executive Agencies
Veterinary
Labs
Authority
Marine &
Fisheries
Agency
Animal
Health
Regulatory
Science
Agency
Rural
Payments
Agency
(larger
ones
named)
Advisory NDPBs
Central
Science
Laboratory
Core
Department
Others
Public
Corporations
Other Executive NDPBs
Centre for
Environment
Fisheries and
Aquaculture
Science
Local Authorities
(LACORS & LBRO)
Agricultural W ages Board | Agricultural
W ages Committee | Commission for Rural
Communities | Consumer Council for
W ater | Food From Britain | Gangmasters
Licensing Authority | Joint Nature
Conservation Committee | National Forest
Company |
Levy Boards
Government
Decontamination Service
Agriculture & Horticulture
Development Board | Sea
Fish Industry Authority
Veterinary
Medicines
Directorate
British Waterways
National Parks
Authorities
Direct Gov
(Act on CO2, etc)
Environment Agency
Covent Garden
Market Authority
Natural
England
Kew
WRAP +
others
Forestry
Commission
(Non ministerial
Department)
Business Link
(Solutions for
Business + Farm
& Environment Themes)
Seen from the point of view of a farmer
A typical farmer (300ha mixed farm, 140 suckler cows and finishing 500 head/year with 2
employees) interacts with at least 18 agencies including:
Animal Health
Local authorities
RPA/RLR
RSPCA
Defra
Environment Agency
Revenue & Customs
Water Companies and so on
It all looks complex and burdensome
Inspection Regimes
Other Agricultural Regulations
Single Payment Scheme
-Trading Standards
-RPA
-Food Standards Agency
-Environment Agency
-Farm Assurance Schemes
-Animal Health
-Environment Agency
-Natural England
-Water Companies
-VMD
Other areas
Employment
-Revenue and Customs
-Health and Safety Executive
-Police
-Inland Revenue
-Local Authority Planners
Plus form filling, guidance to read, and regulation to understand and comply with
Better regulation?
• Understanding customer behaviour
• Being clear about outcomes (what, by when)
• Finding the best form of intervention – biggest benefit at
lowest cost to business and taxpayer
• Continually evaluating effectiveness
• Reducing burdens (regulation and monitoring)
• Joining up processes
Partnerships
•Better Regulation Executive
•Policy and delivery – Defra Network
•Central and local government
•Between Departments
•With private and voluntary sectors
•With business and the citizen
Impact Assessments
•
•
•
•
•
•
Creating a story
Capturing insight and accumulating evidence
Estimating costs and benefits
Exploring options
Consultation and challenge
Obtaining agreement
Regulating Small Firms
• Enterprise Strategy commitment to look for different
approaches to regulating small firms, eg different
thresholds, inspection approaches or exemptions for firms
with fewer than 20 employees
• Explanation of approach (non-prescriptive) in Explanatory
notes/memorandum from 1 October 2008 for secondary
legislation and 09/10 for primary legislation
Code of Practice on Good Guidance
Guidance should be:
• Based on a good understanding of users
• Designed with input from users and their representative bodies
• Organised around the user’s way of working
• Easy for the target users to understand
• Designed to provide an appropriate understanding of how to
comply with the law
• Issued in good time
• Easy to access via Businesslink
• Reviewed and improved
Statutory Compliance Code
It sets out seven elements that regulators, including local
authorities, should follow when discharging their regulatory
functions:
• Supporting economic progress - Regulatory activity should
allow, or even encourage, economic progress. Intervention only
where there is a clear case for protection.
• Risk assessment - Undertaking a risk assessment of all their
activities.
• Information and advice - Providing information and advice in a
way that enables businesses to clearly understand what is
required by law.
Compliance Code
• Inspections - Only performing inspections following a risk
assessment, resources focused on those least likely to comply.
• Data requirements - Collaborating with other regulators to share
data and minimise demand on businesses.
• Compliance and enforcement actions - How formal
enforcement actions, including sanctions and penalties, should
be applied - following the Macrory principles on penalties.
• Accountability - Increasing the transparency of regulatory
organisations by asking them to report on outcomes, costs and
perceptions of their enforcement approach
Hampton Implementation Reviews
• Reviews of regulators to check Hampton’s recommendations are
being implemented by regulators
• Action plan leading to continuous improvement
• Key to better regulation behaviour where Government in direct
contact with citizen
• Incentives for regulator – reputation + access to modern
compliance tools
Macrory Sanctions
• Set out in the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act
2008
• The Macrory review found regulators to be over-reliant on
criminal prosecution – not always the most appropriate
response and many regulators going unpunished because
regulators lacked the necessary means to tackle them
• Recommended a range of civil sanctions that are
transparent, flexible and proportionate
Macrory Sanctions – the Toolkit
• The RES Act allows Ministers, by order, to give a regulator
access to four new civil sanctions:
• Fixed monetary penalty (FMP) notices – under which a
regulator is able to imposed a monetary penalty of a fixed
amount
• Stop notices – which will prevent buisnesses from
carrying on an activity prescribed in the notice until it has
taken steps to come back into complaince.
Macrory Sanctions – the toolkit
• Discretionary requirements – which will enable a regulator
to impose, by notice, one or more of the following:
• A variable monetary penalty (VMP) determined by the
regulator
• A requirement to take specified steps within a stated period to
secure that an offence des not continue to happen again
(compliance notice)
• A requirement to take specified steps within a stated period
to secure that the position is restored, so far as possible, to
what it would have been if no offence had been committed
(restoration notice)
Macrory Sanctions – the Toolkit
• Enforcement Undertakings – which will enable a
business, which a regulator reasonably suspects of having
committed an offence, to give an undertaking to a
regulator to take one or more corrective actions set out in
the undertaking
Government is looking for a step change
in its relationships with its customers…
• “This is the future of our public services.
Accessible to all, personal to you. Not
just a basic standard, but the best quality
tailored to your needs” Prime Minister
• “We must be relentlessly customerfocused” Gus O’Donnell
• “To change public services so they more often meet the needs of
people and businesses, rather than the needs of
government…services that are better for the customer, better for
front line staff and better for the taxpayer” – David Varney,
Service Transformation Agenda
Improving our ‘customer insight’ capability
Environmental
Political
Databases
Syndicated data
Economic
Technical
Social studies
Social
Legislative
Focus Groups
Quantitative Studies
Segmentation Studies
Behaviour and attitude
Interviews
Social research
Source:
(1)
(2)
A customer-focused organisation has customer
insight Network:
and orientation
embedded throughout
Government Communications
Engage Programme
Will, S. “The management and communication of customer insight”, Interactive Marketing, April/June 2005
Surveys
Consultation sessions
Meeting real people
Intermediary feedback
People observation
Listening in
Letters and complaints