The EU wanted to regulate every aspect of our lives. Post-Brexit UK governments have kept some of the EU ideology that only government can save us from the risks of life, and only regulated industries can be trusted. If only that were true.
There is no trouble buying trainers and clothes, with plenty of choice and a range of prices. Food retailing is competitive with a wide range of foods, discounts and promotions.
These basics are brought to us by competitive suppliers and less heavily regulated businesses. Road space is in short supply thanks to a nationalised monopoly, so we sit in congestion much of the time. The water industry lacks enough sewage pipes and waste processing thanks to regulation and regional monopolies. It is now running short of water to supply all the extra people.
The bakers simply bake more bread. The over-regulated electricity industry sells us some of the dearest power in the world and forces us to rely on imports.
Worse can come from regulators. Take the case of the Somerset levels. Their regulator, the Environment Agency, went soft on the pumps and failed to maintain the ditches and culverts that drained the land. Farms disappeared under the excess brackish water in the 2014 floods. It took a Prime Minister and an Environment Secretary to intervene to put back the ways of protecting the land and helping the farms that the Regulator had removed.
Post-Brexit Britain inherited the worst aspect of the EU - it infects every part of our lives - John Redwood
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Or look at the lamentable performance of the Bank of England. Given an overriding task of keeping inflation down to two per cent it created billions of extra money and watched as inflation soared to 11 per cent.
The Bank had forecast it would stay at just two per cent. It then blamed the Ukraine war for the rise, though inflation had already reached three times the target before the Russian army attacked.
Just see how much damage the Habitats regulations have done to growth and the need to provide more homes and infrastructure. HS2 is already well delayed and massively over budget, as a nationalised industry spent £100 m on a bat tunnel. Even the government thought that was bonkers, but they carried on with the regulations that brought it about.
Large areas are blocked from housebuilding by these rules at a time when an elected government wants to increase building by 50 per cent and needs more land with permissions.
Our energy industries have been wrecked by regulation and taxes. Oil and gas have to be kept in the ground, only to be imported instead. The imports mean more CO2 is produced, the consumer pays more, and the Treasury misses out on big tax revenues.
Wind farms largely in Scotland and the North are paid money not to produce power when the wind blows well, as there is not enough grid capacity to transmit it all. Gas power stations are paid to stand idle all the time the wind is blowing well, so they are there when the wind dies down. We end up importing around a quarter of our electrical power on many days, where, before such intensive regulation, we were self-sufficient.
We do need a strong framework of law to ensure safety, financial honesty and fair treatment of customers and employees. We do not need all these interfering regulations claiming to know how best to deliver good quality products at affordable prices.
The government even wants to regulate football, one of our most successful leisure industries and a good export earner. I can think of no greater folly than imposing a Statutory Regulator telling successful clubs how much they can spend, how they can bid for players and how they should make detailed decisions about how their club is run.
The winners will be the lawyers, as different clubs claim unfairness in the ways they are treated in an intensely competitive activity. Imagine a regulator blocking a Liverpool transfer but not a Manchester City one. Hear the protests if a club is told to spend less on new players or facilities.
You can have too much regulation. You can have the wrong kind of regulation. The UK is suffering from both. Time to pause the dash for more. Time to reconsider those Regulators that have made a mess and let us down. Competition is the consumer's friend. We all need to think before we buy.
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