The purpose of regulation

Prominent Conservatives, including former Ministers and a previous Chair of the Competition and Markets Authority, have called for greater Parliamentary accountability of the UK’s regulators, in a new report.

This report, offers a systematic appraisal of the UK’s regulators covering key economic sectors including energy, housing, and financial services.

It identifies a number of systemic issues which fall into four main categories:

• a lack of strategic direction to and by the regulators;
  
• strained regulatory relationships - both between industry and regulators, and between regulators themselves;
• incomplete lines of accountability around the objectives set for regulators and the measurement of regulatory performance; and
• the need to build up greater skills and knowledge within regulators and support them with sufficient resourcing