One in, three out
Christine Berry on “deregulation” and Grenfell Tower:
In the wake of the horrifying Grenfell Tower disaster, people are starting to ask questions about why reports on housing safety were sat on and ignored. And the finger is being pointed towards the government’s ‘war on red tape’ – more specifically, towards a little-known policy called ‘one-in, three-out regulation’.
Oh that – the Republicans and Trump have been promoting that here, too. For every new “regulation” aka protection, you have to remove three. Wham, just like that – no questions asked about whether the three removed are actually a life or death necessity or not.
[H]ere’s a quick primer on what people are talking about when they talk about things like ‘one in, three out’. The architecture the government has put in place has three main pillars, each of which are systematically designed to prevent new laws being passed and to privilege the interests of big business over ordinary people:
- ‘One in, three out’ (OITO). This means that no government department can introduce a new law that imposes a cost to business unless it can find another law to repeal that cuts costs to business by at least three times that amount. With the policy having been steadily ratcheting up for 7 years now, this basically means that new laws are nigh on impossible to introduce, because there is precious little left to cut.
- Impact assessments. This is the way civil servants have to assess proposed new laws to comply with OITO. All potential impacts have to have a price put on them, which immediately undervalues things that are hard to put a price on – like the benefits of clean air or safe homes. But it doesn’t matter anyway, because as far as OITO is concerned, the only number that matters is the cost to business: the benefits to society are literally irrelevant.
- The Regulatory Policy Committee. This is a quango with the power to give the green or red light to impact assessments, effectively vetoing new laws if they don’t think the OITO figures are good enough. It might sound like a bunch of technocrats, but it’s actually stuffed with corporate lobbyists. Stephen and I found that from 2013-2015 they met almost exclusively with other lobbyists, and boasted about being an “effective brake” on government’s ability to pass laws. Yes, we are putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse.
It just assumes that laws and regulations / protections are a bad, toxic thing, all of them, by definition.
The key thing to understand about this regime is that it applies to any law that costs businesses money. That includes the cost of paying the minimum wage, the cost of building diesel engines that don’t emit poisonous fumes – and, yes, the cost of making our homes safe to live in.
You know, laws that have made things slightly less shit over the past century or so, and could do more along those lines if it weren’t for these people who think laws are of the devil.
The appalling fate of the Grenfell residents has laid bare the human consequences of this inhuman policy. And they are not the first casualties in this war on protections. Scientists have found that handing control of plans to cut salt and sugar in food to the likes of McDonalds and Mars may have contributed to 6,000 deaths a year. The government raised the speed limit for lorries on single carriageways in order to cut costs for haulage companies, despite acknowledging it would likely cause a 14% increase in accidents.
As long as someone somewhere is making some money, that’s all that matters. Your health and safety? Pffft – not their problem, Snowflake.
Yeah… the sad thing is, the short-form description of this approach, “You have to make sure the laws are worth the cost” is an easy sell. They just never reveal how they are tilting the scales with corporate thumbs on the Debit side.
Properly done, you’d weigh the costs of proposed regulation vs. the cost of doing nothing, over an extended period, and factor in things like public health and other expenses paid by the general populace. Then you’d do a comparison, and if the regulation still comes in the red, THEN you have to make your extraordinary case for why this is necessary despite the cost.
But the general public doesn’t have lobbyists who get to say, “Ignore the other half of the equation.”
I don’t see that as properly done, because not all protections will necessarily “pay” more. Money shouldn’t be the only criterion. It should be part of the discussion, but it shouldn’t have an automatic veto.
I mean all these deaths are downright cheap – no health care, no prolonged need for transport and similar. They’re dead; costs over. But we don’t see that as a good outcome.
The implication of this policy is that there must exist an optimum number of regulations, say some arbitrary number like 2,317 regulations and no more. As if we can determine by a numerical formula how many regulations are needed, without reference to the facts on the ground or even the contents of those regulations. And of course it is always assumed we are on the high side of this imaginary optimum, no matter how many regulations are cut.
For things like fire-resistant cladding on buildings, you really shouldn’t need regulations: it’s a no-brainer. “If we attach this to the building there will be nothing to stop it going up like a matchstick”. Assuming all those involved are professionals, if PE cladding was supplied, the builder should have refused to fit it; if it was specified, the vendor should have refused to supply it; and if it was requested the architect should have refused to specify it. Several instances of professionals there, all more competent than any regulation.
Of course, at the top of the heap are the bean counters with nobody to overrule or second-guess them.