Route map to reform: deregulation

Road Map to Reform is a new series of reports looking into different areas of government activity. The first of this series is Deregulation. The report argues that EU rules should be applied equally across all member countries, utilities should no longer have to pick up the cost of customers who cannot pay their bills, and small firms should have to deal with only one official on all aspects of business and workplace regulation. Senior Fellow of London Business School Tim Ambler and economic consultant Keith Boyfield also demand that the 16,000 pages of EU laws must be radically boiled down, that new regulations should expire automatically after three years, and that the official consumer watchdogs should be wound up.

"Over-regulation depresses corporate profits, consumes valuable management time and saps entrepreneurial morale," say the authors. "It makes the UK less attractive to investors and destroys the wealth creation on which the whole of government depends." There are three big sources of red tape - the EU, Whitehall, and the regulatory offices like Ofcom and Ofwat. For each one, we need to make sure that fewer new regulations are created, that existing ones are rationalized, and that enforcement does not become over-zealous.