Tear down boundaries to progress, UK finance minister tells regulators

LONDON (Reuters) – Finance minister Rachel Reeves has urged Britain’s regulators to take away boundaries to financial progress, tasking them with making a regulatory setting that reinforces funding and innovation.

In a gathering on Thursday, Reeves advised the bosses of the competitors, power, water, media, aviation and railways watchdogs that financial progress was the “absolute prime precedence” for the federal government, the finance ministry mentioned.

It comes as Britain’s Labour authorities, voted into energy final July, grapples with a sluggish economic system, which solely grew 0.1% in November after contracting in September and October.

Reeves has additionally confronted criticism from companies after her tax-raising Oct. 30 finances, which included massive will increase in social safety contributions paid by employers.

“Each regulator, it doesn’t matter what sector, has a component to play by tearing down the regulatory boundaries that maintain again progress,” Reeves mentioned.

“I need to see this mission woven into the very cloth of our regulators by way of a cultural shift from excessively specializing in danger to serving to drive progress.”

The assembly follows a joint letter from Reeves and Prime Minister Keir Starmer to regulators, asking every of them to provide you with proposals for 5 reforms to assist financial progress within the coming 12 months.

In complete, 17 regulators will probably be known as in to have their proposals scrutinised within the coming weeks, the finance ministry mentioned.

Whereas the regulators agreed within the assembly that that they had a task to play in driving progress, in addition they highlighted some boundaries, together with their different authorized obligations, it added.

Reeves additionally known as on regulators to institute cultural change to ship progress “as a substitute of excessively specializing in danger.”