Member

So I do not think that it is crying wolf to point out the potential risk of investing too many powers via primary legislation in a new regulator. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has said that this is an independent regulator, but it does not look like that. It does not look like light-touch regulation; it looks like government intervention in a healthy and thriving market, and has the potential to do significant long-term damage as a result of overreach and overregulation. A further report by the Centre for Policy Studies, The Future of Regulation, finds that the gross annual cost of regulation for all businesses over 10 years in the UK was £35 billion.