Better business regulation for Scotland
1 September 2008
Government has a better chance producing efficient and effective legislation if it can learn to act in partnership with business.
This is one of the main recommendations of the Regulatory Review Group (RRG), an independent working group set up to find ways to improve the quality of regulation and cut red tape in Scotland.
The report says that such a partnership: “Will have at its heart the understanding that to make better regulation, each side should understand what the other is trying to achieve, what the impact of that will be, and agree the most appropriate way for that to be achieved.”
The group also argues that UK-wide or European regulation too often ignores Scottish law and practices, and recommends that legislators at Westminster should consider the impact on all parts of the UK before, rather than after, enacting new laws or regulations.
Among the RRG’s other proposals are:
A shorter and simpler Business Impact Assessment should be mandatory for all legislation and statutory instruments with the potential to impact on business.
Each Government department and regulator that introduces or enacts legislation affecting business should have a group of businesses that it uses to ‘road test’ paperwork, such as forms, before it is issued. They should also consult with the regulators whose responsibility it will be to enforce the new rules, to ensure they are workable.
The Scottish Government should have the right to make its own case directly to the European Union, where it feels this is necessary, rather than having to go through Westminster.
Regulators should be free to adopt a more “common sense” approach to enforcement.
Government and regulators should constantly review the composition of their stakeholder groups, almost on an issue by issue basis, to ensure they reflect an appropriate range of interests for the issue in question.
John Swinney, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth in the Scottish Government, has welcomed the report.
He said: “All regulation should be carefully road-tested to determine exactly how it will impact on business. That’s a key recommendation of today’s report and one that we are determined to take forward.
“This report will signal a new era where we can work together with business to deliver this greatly improved, ‘partnership’ approach to the regulations we introduce as a government.”
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