The UK government has introduced a deregulatory agenda aimed at boosting economic growth and generating wealth for working people. The Prime Minister Keir Starmer, likened regulation in the UK economy to ‘Japanese knotweed’ and his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has outlined a plan to scale back regulations for businesses and exert greater control over the UK’s regulatory bodies. 

In the financial sector the government replaced the chair of the competition regulator with a former Amazon boss after deciding he was insufficiently focused on growth. Starmer also wrote to several regulators last year asking them to propose growth ideas and decided to scrap the UK’s payments regulator and merge its operations with the Financial Conduct Authority to simplify the UK’s regulatory system and drive economic growth.

Susan Hawley, executive director of Spotlight on Corruption, says that the government replacing the head of the Competition Markets Authority is ‘really concerning’ because it is sending signals to regulators that the government can dictate how they do their role. ‘It is essential for a healthy democracy and economy that regulators are properly independent,’ she says.

One of the ‘pro-growth’ ideas that the Financial Conduct Authority suggested to the government is to pare back money laundering regulations by scrapping ‘know your customer rules’ for smaller transactions. In addition, the Financial Conduct Authority has launched a review of the senior manager’s regime, introduced following the global financial crisis to improve culture and increase individual accountability, which has only been used by the regulator a handful of times. ‘If you talk to people in the white-collar crime industry, they will say that senior executive accountability is one of the surest ways to create a deterrent against companies committing crimes because that personal responsibility is critical to making people at the top instil a culture of good conduct and compliance,’ Hawley says.

Another growth area targeted by the government for deregulation is artificial intelligence. Starmer said in his action plan for AI that he wants the UK to be a global leader in AI and will create ‘AI growth zones’ for private sector investment while embedding the technology in the public sector to boost productivity and improve living standards. He referred to those who have urged caution in the sector as ‘blockers’ to growth.

Susie Alegre, a human rights barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, says she is disappointed in the lack of reference to equality and human rights in government announcements about its artificial intelligence policy. ‘It seemed to me there is a dissonance between the government’s position more broadly on the rule of law and human rights, which seems to reflect the reality of the legal framework, and then the push on AI without recognising that AI also operates within that framework,’ she says.

In October the Attorney General, Lord Richard Hermer KC, stressed the need to strengthen the government’s commitment to the rule of law and human rights in the face of challenges including growing inequality and AI. 

Alegre says that the UK government will have to consider its obligations under the Human Rights act and Equality Act when implementing AI in the public sector and should be carrying out human rights impact assessments to avoid costly legal challenges and negative human rights impacts in the future. ‘For example, there might be questions of a right to a fair trial or AI being used to decide on questions about people’s liberty in a probation context,’ she says. ‘Really the full range of human rights are potentially engaged depending on how and where the AI has been used’.

To build the data centres necessary for AI development Starmer has indicated he is keen to reform the UK’s planning system. The government is also attempting to loosen planning regulations to ensure it can meet its targets to complete major infrastructure projects and build 1.5 million homes before the next parliament. In March the government tabled the Planning and Infrastructure Bill which introduces various measures to speed up the planning process including by reducing opportunities for legal challenges to building projects and environmental regulations for developers. 

Shona Frame, Membership Officer of the IBA Section on Energy, Environment, Natural Resources and Infrastructure Law, says that changes to the planning system should improve the consistency and speed of decision making. ‘We have this log jam that doesn’t support government plans,’ she says. ‘Their housing policy requires an enormous amount of house building so removing that element of friction in the planning system is welcome’. 

Alongside making homes affordable the government has committed to ensuring the new homes it builds are safe. In March the UK government agreed to act on all 58 recommendations of the Grenfell Inquiry, which found that reckless deregulation of the construction industry led to the unavoidable deaths of 72 people in a fire at a high-rise tower block in London. ‘The Grenfell inquiry recommendations add a level of regulation aimed at quality and safety standards in design, build and occupation phases. I don’t think that’s inconsistent with streamlining the planning process to allow projects to get to the build stage,’ says Frame.

The decision to strip back environmental obligations appears to be the most controversial part of the bill. In the government’s own impact assessment of the bill, it found little evidence that protections for nature block housing developments and infrastructure projects. Wildlife Trusts says: ‘The Government is proposing changes through the Planning Bill which would be disastrous for the natural world and undermine infrastructure delivery’.

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