I am increasingly coming round to the view that regulation is probably the biggest obstacle to business growth. In this regard, I want to congratulate Bernard Ginns for his perceptive and thoughtful comments in Tuesday’s Yorkshire Post. He makes the point that if you want people to behave like adults, you have to treat them as such and quotes Sir Nigel Knowles of DLA Piper as saying that “regulation is what you must do, Best practice is what you should do. You can’t regulate trust into existence and you can’t legislate to make people trustworthy.”
The problem is that rules are often no more than an invitation to find a way round them. The more complex the rules, the more work there is for clever consultants. The classic example is tax: The higher the tax rate, the lower the tax yield. It is not a coincidence that the fastest-growing economies are those with the least amount of regulation – including employment legislation.
Obviously, no-one in their right mind wants the world of trade and industry to degenerate into some anarchic free-for-all where the winners are those who are most ruthless. Nor should we revert to a Dickensian system where employees are callously exploited.
I fear it is probably too late, but it would be wonderful if we could recreate an environment where peer pressure was sufficient to ensure that business was conducted fairly and honestly. National organisations such as the CBI and Institute of Directors and local ones such as chambers of commerce or the Cutlers Company should perhaps be looking for ways to develop a culture of integrity. Just think of the millions of pounds that could be saved by scrapping all the regulatory bodies.

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