UK ministers are discussing behind the scenes plans about reshaping the country’s regulatory landscape, business secretary Jonathan Reynolds has hinted. And whether the country has the right number of regulators is one of the questions on the table.

Reynolds was Speaking at a Samsung KX event in London on Thursday and said: “Right now, I don’t think our regulatory environment is doing enough to drive investor confidence and support growth.”

He stressed he had heard and understood the clear message from business leaders that regulators in the UK were too cumbersome, too slow and did not really understand how businesses and markets worked.

“I’m taking this first step today but watch this space. I’m serious about delivering our wider regulatory reform over the coming weeks and months,” he said, without giving further details on what that reform may entail.

Growth agenda

The current Labour government has made economic growth its primary mission, and has repeatedly called on UK regulators to do more to support businesses and attract foreign investment.

And ministers have not shied away from making aggressive decisions to achieve that goal. Last month, the chair of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) was forced to resign as chancellor Rachel Reeves said he “did not share the government’s strategic approach towards growth.”

Reynolds said at the time: “We want to see regulators including the CMA supercharging the economy with pro-business decisions that will drive prosperity and growth, putting more money in people’s pockets.”

Criticism has also come from British parliamentarians and peers, who published a report last November and called the UK’s other key regulator, the FCA, “dishonest and incompetent.”

Strategic steer for CMA

The latest remarks by the business secretary came on the same day the government announced its new Draft Strategic Steer to the Competition and Markets Authority.

In the brief document, the Department for Business and Trade has said it expects the CMA to;

• use its tools proportionately, with growth and investment in mind;
• minimise uncertainty by engaging with those affected by the CMA’s work and report on impact of work;
• engage and work with the government on key issues.

The government has also said it “expects to see clearly and quickly how the CMA intends to account for this steer in its work, and report on how it has applied the steer in practice in its annual report.”

Referring to the new Steer, Reynolds said on Thursday it “isn’t about meaningless platitudes” but about the cutting of red tape. “It’s about effective consumer protection, competition law and digital market powers so that we create a level-playing field for businesses to compete on,” he added.

The business secretary also had words of appreciation for the new CMA leadership, adding that under their leadership the agency had “already taken significant steps in adopting this approach … in always having growth and investment in mind.”

But despite government calls for easing regulation and prioritising growth, the CMA last month announced two investigations, one into Amazon and Microsoft’s could services dominance in the UK, and another into Apple and Google’s mobile operating systems.

Other UK financial regulators, such as the FCA, have also previously called for “Improving our understanding of how financial services regulation affects economic growth.”