PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Business: Regulation (6 November 2014)

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how many new statutory regulations on business have been introduced since May 2010; and how many regulations on businesses have been repealed in that time.

Asked by:
Sir Christopher Chope (Conservative)

Since this Government came into office we have reduced the stock of existing regulation through the Red Tape Challenge programme and controlled the flow of regulation through the One-in, One-out and One-in, Two-out rules. Any Department wishing to introduce new regulations which impose a cost on business can only do so if they make a reduction in cost through the removal of regulations with equivalent costs from elsewhere. From January 2013 the Government increased its deregulatory ambition by introducing the One-In, Two-Out rule, under which Departments must find two pounds of saving for every pound of extra cost imposed.

The achievements of these two programmes will be set out in the Ninth Statement of New Regulation, to be published in December 2014. At the time of publishing the Eighth Statement in July 2014, there had been 72 regulatory ‘INs’ and 152 deregulatory ‘OUTs’ since January 2011, as well as 126 measures with zero net cost to business. As a result, this Government has so far reduced the annual cost to business of domestic regulation by over £1.5 billion since January 2011.

Answered by:
Matt Hancock (Conservative)
11 November 2014