The Tools to Deliver Better Regulation
Revising the Regulatory Impact Assessment: A Consultation
The Better Regulation Executive finished its consultation on proposals to revise the Regulatory Impact Assessment process and published 'The Tools to Deliver Better Regulation – Revising the Regulatory Impact Assessment: A Consultation'. The proposed revisions aim to increase the transparency of Impact Assessments so that the costs and benefits of new proposals are clearer and updated throughout the policy making cycle.
The objectives we sought to achieve were:
- To embed Regulatory Impact assessments at the heart of policy making.
- to improve the quality of the economic and other analysis that underpins policy making;
- To increase the transparency of the analysis underlying policy options.
As a result, we proposed a number of changes to the Regulatory Impact Assessment so that policy makers could:
- Set out the policy problem to be tackled in a clear, unambiguous way;
- Make much more transparent the costs, benefits and effects of policy options;
- Set out clearly whether the policy option complies with best practice such as the Hampton principles, and if not, why not;
- Publish the evidence underpinning the key conclusions.
This should result in:
- A process that starts earlier and finishes later - with assessments republished as the costs and benefit estimates change;
- Higher quality impact assessment, focusing on key questions;
- Information that can be easily scrutinised and challenged by those with an interest;
- Simpler tracking of the totality of regulatory costs and benefits over time.
The consultation closed on 16 October 2006.
