UK Regulatory Innovation Office vows to slash red tape – but we've heard it all before
- Reference: 1728469871
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/10/09/uk_regulatory_innovation_office/
- Source link:
Earlier this week, the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT) launched the Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO), which it said would "reduce the burden of red tape" weighing down innovative companies. What kind of companies? Those that provide "AI training software for surgeons to deliver more accurate surgical treatments for patients and drones which can improve business efficiency and quickly send critical deliveries to remote parts of the country," it said.
The RIO aims to "support regulators to update regulation, speeding up approvals, and ensuring different regulatory bodies work together smoothly." Its job is to tell the government of "regulatory barriers to innovation ... set priorities for regulators which align with the government's broader ambitions, and support regulators to develop the capability they need to meet them and grow the economy."
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Science and technology secretary Peter Kyle said in a statement: "By speeding up approvals, providing regulatory certainty, and reducing unnecessary delays, we're curbing the burden of red tape so businesses and our public services can innovate and grow, which means more jobs, a stronger economy, and a better quality of life for people across the UK."
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But haven't we been here before? A little more than two years ago, the previous Conservative government promised to carve a new data protection law that would unlock growth and save businesses around £1 billion ($1.3 billion) over the next ten years.
"We can't afford to stick with the status quo, to keep prioritizing process over results, and allowing unnecessary bureaucracy to stifle growth and innovation," said Nadine Dorries, who was digital and culture secretary at the time.
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The reform to GDPR, which the UK has inherited from its EU-membership era, has yet to take place as the legislation only made it to the committee stage in the House of Lords before the July general election.
Since the Conservative and Labour parties spent the election criticizing each other, it might seem surprising that they have landed on the same page in terms of regulation and innovation. But then, ask a business if it likes regulation and you know what answer you'll get. Nobody likes regulations, but then nobody likes buildings falling down – or, more soberingly, [5]catching fire .
Governments tend to blame regulation for "stifling growth and innovation" because the real culprit is a much mightier foe: lack of investment. This week, UK-born researcher in psychology and computer science Geoffrey Hinton [6]won the Nobel Prize in physics – jointly with John Hopfield, a US professor emeritus at Princeton University – for work on artificial neural networks.
[7]UK Ministry of Defence gets into chipmaking game, buys gallium arsenide fab
[8]Objections to datacenter builds may be overruled now they are 'Critical National Infrastructure'
[9]Labour wins race to lead UK, but few would envy the load in its tech in-tray
[10]Britain's Ministry of Defence accused of wasting £174M on 'external advice'
Hinton's career trajectory is suggestive of the malaise affecting UK innovation, which has little to do with regulation. His Wikipedia page states that though he gained a PhD at the University of Sussex, he left the UK after finding it difficult to get funding for his work. He has since spent the bulk of his career in the US and Canada.
In a coincidence [11]spotted by writer Ananyo Bhattacharya, not long before Hinton got his gong, the UK government confirmed it was withdrawing £6 million of grant funding to establish a new National Academy focused on mathematical sciences.
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Professor Jens Marklof, president of the London Mathematical Society, said the academy "could have been a huge driver of economic growth by improving the flow of mathematical analysis, cutting-edge research, and technological innovation into policy making." He said the organization would engage with the government's other efforts to promote and support mathematics.
In 2022, the Royal Society, British Academy, Royal Academy of Engineering, and Academy of Medical Sciences [13]reported that UK investment in R&D was 1.74 percent of GDP, less than half the figure attributed to Korea (4.64 percent) and well below the OECD average of 2.48 percent. The previous government committed to match the OECD average by 2027, and in February [14]pledged to spend £20 billion in the current fiscal year.
In its RIO announcement, DSIT said £1.6 million would be awarded to the Food Standards Agency for its Engineering Biology Sandbox Fund, designed to "test innovative regulatory approaches for products like cultivated meat." Fake meat aside, the government's autumn statement will tell us whether its ambitions in science and technology have real substance. ®
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Zwaoq9FJjItPH3TcefA6_QAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[5] https://www.planningresource.co.uk/article/1887137/grenfell-report-coalition-governments-drive-cut-red-tape-led-building-safety-issues-ignored-delayed
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/ai_godfather_wins_nobel_prize/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/uk_mod_gets_into_chipmaking/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/17/objections_to_datacenter_builds_cni/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/05/labour_tech_challenges/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/mod_external_advice_spending/
[11] https://x.com/Ananyo/status/1843643862704894204
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zwaoq9FJjItPH3TcefA6_QAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/Publications/2022/Investing-in-UK-RD--2022-update.pdf
[14] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-science-and-technology-framework/the-uk-science-and-technology-framework-update-on-progress-9-february-2024
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
And since then we've had the Grenfell Tower fire (which this deregulation was a contributing factor to) and numerous bankrupt councils.
Pickles hated the local government sector and did his best to destroy it. It's when councils started having their real terms funding *really* cut. The preferred alternative being, of course, outsourcing to private sector companies who knew exactly the right thing to do for residents. Arconic, Carrillion, Barnet's "EasyCouncil" model, etc. etc.
DO we need another regulatory body
Is anyone else tired of the continual rebranding of government bodies and the (re)creation of new ones?
I am not going to hold my breath on this body having any significant impact on anything of note, or indeed substance!
Re: DO we need another regulatory body
I thought Jim Hacker's Dept of Administrative Affairs was supposed to be satire?
Re: DO we need another regulatory body
I thought Jim Hacker's Dept of Administrative Affairs was supposed to be satire?
Very accurate satire.
Reducing "red tape" all too often ends up as either Big Business 2 Public 0, Government 2 Public 0 or both. Enabling that is why we had Brexit and, of course, Labour have had form on this for a long time.
Having just had a proposal turned down that had crystal clear whole-UK benefit, and demonstrably so even before running the project...
Promising to reduce red tape when you ARE the red tape, and you make a living off being it has predictable consequences.
Tax land, not labor
This will cause an explosion of jobs and innovation. Remove the overhead to run business, so that anyone could become rich from providing services. No income tax, no corporate tax, no lawyers and accountants producing zero tangible GDP. No government spending on regulation, tracking, tax collection, prosecution etc. And it is impossible not to pay the land tax. You cannot hide it in offshores.
Less than 1% of population owns 50% of England [1]. 18% of England is owned by corporations, some of them based overseas or in offshore jurisdictions. But military and police to protect this land is probably paid from poor workers' taxes.
Home owners own only 5% of the country. Suddenly housing issue will be solved and people will not spend most of their earnings to find a place to live, instead spending on consumption.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/apr/17/who-owns-england-thousand-secret-landowners-author
Re: Tax land, not labor
Taxing land wouldn't work; it would bankrupt the people who look after land that is hard to farm, creating an incentive to build on some beautiful sections of countryside to pay a tax bill. It would also push leasehold rates through the roof, affecting a lot of less well off people.
Much better to bring in a flat rate of income tax, applying to all income. (i.e. same rate of tax on income from shares, dividends interest payments, selling land and property etc.) That would actually impact people with the most assets the most, because the act of converting the assets into money that can be spent is income, and would be taxed as such. Getting rid of the tax bands and going flat rate for all income rewards people for working more and takes money away from people living off inherited assets. (Of course, that's why a tax scheme like that will never happen...)
> it would bankrupt the people who look after land that is hard to farm
No, because land should be taxed based on its productive qualities.
> leasehold rates through the roof, affecting a lot of less well off people
Would you mind to explain how it works? The poor will become better off overall due to better economy. Besides they do not own any land.
> better to bring in a flat rate
This would hit the poor for sure.
Re: Tax land, not labor
Interesting, but as flawed as any other measure such as the "window tax". Approximately 70% of the UK's land is farms and parks. Look forward to prices for food and recreational amenities rising.
My land is half house, half garden. Could I sell the garden to build another house? Or better, high-rise flats so all the flat owners share the land tax between them? Of course I can, without those pesky planning permission and safety regulations getting in the way!
Re: Tax land, not labor
>” My land is half house, half garden. Could I sell the garden to build another house?”
Half hearted, sell both and build two high-rise flats then you will have all the benefits of a penthouse apartment and roof garden…
Only constraint, you are banned from living anywhere else, so as to ensure you get the full benefit of your investment…
> 70% farms and parks
Land should be taxed by density of nearby public infrastructure. For example, London Tube is expensive, so should be land near the stations.
Land regulation will stay, or may become more complex.
> prices for food and recreational amenities rising
Quite contrary: services and produce will become cheaper, due to booming economy. Economy will boom, because people will spend instead of paying to LAND-lords.
Re: Tax land, not labor
>” Remove the overhead to run business, so that anyone could become rich from providing services.”
That is effectively what cloud has done!
I move my datacentre into “the cloud” and get rid of the building; no longer paying rent or business rates.
Do online sales and can downsize high street presence…
Yes the cloud provider is paying business rates, but I doubt the level of business rates placed on a data centre is anything other than significantly less than the business rates orignally paid by all those businesses pre-cloud….
Re: Tax land, not labor
That big sucking sound you here is all the money raining upwards into the cloud and then getting blown to the US.
> what cloud has done!
Even more: taxable land will provide leverage to land-less businesses. They typically generate higher added value. Intelligent services do not require much space. More will be done with less.
Re: Tax land, not labor
Implementation of the proposed taxation change should happen slowly over a longer period of time.
People concerned of not being able to pay the land tax after retirement could simply save in advance from their (now untaxed) income. Alternatively they can move out to areas with cheaper land and let the productive space available to younger generations.
Rentier economy
The UK is a rentier economy - there's a better RoI and lower risk if you simply buy property in most instances than investing in R&D/whatever. Been like that for near enough half a century so until that changes then the rest is bollox.
Oh and I'm talking about the actual companies themselves, not the plague of buy-to-let scum which have emerged in the last two decades.
Re: Rentier economy
Oh and I'm talking about the actual companies themselves, not the plague of buy-to-let scum which have emerged in the last two decades.
Gen Z are cutely innocent. Peter Rachmann built his empire in the fifties.
Re: Rentier economy
> lower risk if you simply buy property
I am still waiting for my taxes back for bailing out property owners during the 2008 crisis. Now that the owners are doing great, pay the f-ng debt!
So it is not that the risk of buying property is magically lower, but making the taxpayer to bail them out is where the risk is reassigned.
Thatcher - the special relationship…
>” Hinton's career trajectory is suggestive of the malaise affecting UK innovation, which has little to do with regulation. His Wikipedia page states that though he gained a PhD at the University of Sussex, he left the UK after finding it difficult to get funding for his work”
Hinton left the UK circa 1980 (*), when the UK had a government that didn’t believe in funding scientific R&D and also didn’t believe in paying universities and researchers more than a pittance. Hence UK researchers were prime targets for the well funded US research universities, thus the “the brain drain”…
Thatcher’s/Conservative response was the UK could not afford to compete, so Thatcher used her relationship with Reagan to block the movement of GB passport holding researchers (and high profile individuals) to the US and simply wrung her hands as UK universities lost out on funding, complaining that they needed to become”world class”…
We did (briefly) have a period (David Cameron PM?) when the UK government activity encouraged foreign investment in the development of R&D capabilities in the UK, and thus encourage researchers to return to the UK, but subsequent events seem to indicate the establishment hasn’t taken this on-board, reverting to form
(*) https://web.archive.org/web/20200801050640/https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/fullcv.pdf
Re: subsequent events
Coincidentally, I was watching the House of Lords Covid Vaccine Rollout committee (Parliament channel, last night).
Oxford vaccine boffins were being asked about their views on progress towards better planning for the next pandemic. Besides some rather tart opinions on various Government initiatives, they all agreed that the parlous state of UK funding (and high living costs) meant that talent is going to the US and Japan, not coming here.
Re: subsequent events
Oxford has a particular problem with ludicrous house prices. Two bed Victorian end terrace? [1]Thick end of a million pounds.
[1] https://housesforsaletorent.co.uk/property/for-sale/2-bedroom-end-of-terrace-house-for-sale-in-hayfield-road-oxford-oxfordshire-ox2/9020010/
AI Red Tape
"AI training software for surgeons to deliver more accurate surgical treatments for patients"
Which couldn't possibly go wrong. No way that the AI could hallucinate a nonexistent organ, or an actual organ in the wrong place.
Re: AI Red Tape
No way that the AI could hallucinate a nonexistent organ, or an actual organ in the wrong place.
Some people do have their organs in "the wrong place" (when a friend had appendicitis they couldn't find it at first because it was round the back), so that might actually be helpful (within reason). It's a generation of surgeons skilled in removing inflamed Shatner's Bassoons from people that's the worrying bit.
Eric Pickles also pledged to get rid of it 2010:
"Breaking free from council red tape. My department wants to free up councils to deliver for the public. I won't be micromanaging or interfering any more"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jul/06/local-government-public-power-councils