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

Environment Agency

Core Department

Central Science

LaboratoryVeterinary

Labs Authority

Centre for Environment Fisheries and Aquaculture Science

Advisory NDPBs

Marine & Fisheries Agency

Natural England

Kew

Other Executive NDPBs

Levy Boards

Covent Garden Market Authority

Forestry Commission

(Non ministerial Department)

National Parks Authorities

WRAP +

others

Executive Agencies Non Departmental Public Bodies

Public Corporations

Others (larger ones named)

The Defra NetworkIncreasing degree of independence

British Waterways

Rural Payments

Agency Government Decontamination Service

Animal Health

Agricultural Wages Board | Agricultural Wages Committee | Commission for Rural Communities | Consumer Council for Water | Food From Britain | GangmastersLicensing Authority | Joint Nature Conservation Committee | National Forest Company |

Agriculture & Horticulture Development Board | Sea Fish Industry Authority

Veterinary Medicines

DirectorateRegulatory Science Agency

Local Authorities

(LACORS & LBRO)

Business Link

(Solutions for

Business + Farm

& Environment Themes)

Direct Gov

(Act on CO2, etc)

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 CodeIt 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 customer-focused” 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

Source: (1) Government Communications Network: Engage Programme (2) Will, S. “The management and communication of customer insight”, Interactive Marketing, April/June 2005

A customer-focused organisation has customer insight and orientation embedded throughoutA customer-focused organisation has customer insight and orientation embedded throughout

Consultation sessions

Meeting real people

Intermediary feedback

People observation

Listening in

Letters and complaints

Databases

Syndicated data

Social studies

Surveys

Environmental

Political

Economic

Technical

Social

Legislative

Focus Groups

Quantitative Studies

Segmentation Studies

Behaviour and attitude

Interviews

Social research

Enviro

nmen

t

Data

Research People

Closeness