Last Friday, we and the Fairness Foundation published a report, Fair Rules, Fair Growth, arguing that a robust regulatory system must be at the heart of Labour’s plans to deliver growth and national renewal.

The report was covered by Will Dunn in the New Statesman. It calls for the ‘Growth Duty’; to be replaced with a ‘Fair Growth Duty’ which would prioritise economic growth alongside key social and environment protections, allowing regulators to deliver sustainable growth that drives up living standards across the UK. We also wrote an open letter to the government, signed by 24 business leaders, investors and former regulators, to demand a re-think on their current deregulatory agenda.

You can read the report online or download a PDF version. Please share it on Bluesky or LinkedIn if you think that your network might find it of interest.

The government’s war on regulators continued this week as Rachel Reeves ordered an audit of 130 UK regulators to ensure they are boosting growth, including looking at whether some could be scrapped altogether.

This follows a string of deregulatory actions from the government, including; replacing the Chief Executive of the Competition and Markets Authority with former Amazon executive Doug Gurr, calling for post-2008 financial crash regulations to be rolled back, and ‘bulldozing’ through planning regulations, to name but a few.

Labour, it appears, has fallen into what FT journalist Alan Beattie calls ‘the cult of deregulation’ – ill thought out, ideological campaigns against ‘red tape’ which mimic the libertarian energies being unleashed on the other side of the Atlantic. As Labour continues to ramp up their deregulatory rhetoric, they send a clear message; growth is priority number one for the Labour government, and regulators are viewed as the primary obstacle to delivering this.

 

A hackneyed approach to growth

Boosting growth is, of course, important. Years of slow growth, weak investment and stagnating living standards has left the public feeling worse off. Meanwhile a stronger economy can mean more opportunities for employment and better funding for key public services through tax revenue.

But Labour’s deregulatory model for generating growth employs the same hackneyed approach which has driven instability for over a decade. Whether it’s the 2008 financial crash, the Grenfell tragedy or the modern day sewage crisis in Britain, weak regulation and poor enforcement has been a recipe for chaos. It has allowed unscrupulous firms to maximise their profits while working people and the environment have suffered.

Well-designed regulation creates an altogether different kind of economy. It promotes the kind of long term, fair growth that ensures the public and the environment are prioritised alongside the ability of companies to generate profit. Whether it’s ensuring people have access to decent housing and live in a healthy environment, or requiring employers to provide secure work, a strong regulatory system is essential for delivering inclusive growth that makes everyone, not just a few, better off.

This is a vision of growth that is grounded in the idea that we are all stakeholders in our economy, and that the rewards of growth should be fairly distributed. Far from being the enemy of growth, our paper suggests that well-functioning regulators will allow Labour to deliver a different kind of growth – one that supports their other core commitments, such as breaking down barriers to opportunity and hitting net zero.

The confusing fact is, that Labour knows this. Strong regulation was the backbone of their initial ‘Securonomics’ pitch to voters, with a Single Enforcement Agency to uphold a raft of new worker protections and greater funding for local councils to deliver stronger rights for renters on the housing market. These flagship policies demonstrate a clear willingness to use regulatory levers to boost living standards.

Yet Starmer’s recent likening of regulators to ‘Japanese knotweed’ in the economy takes a wholly different approach. Instead of a consistent narrative on the importance of strong regulators, Labour has started culture war against them.

Their approach to boosting growth and raising living standards appears contradictory. On the one hand they extend the arm of the state to enforce important new social protections, and yet they retract the other in service of a pro-growth strategy which has failed so consistently and so conclusively to deliver for voters.

 

A unified vision for growth

A different vision must be at the heart of Labour’s plan for renewal – one that abandons the false choice between growth and standards, recognising the importance regulators can play in shaping a fair economy.

Our report calls on the government to do two things. Firstly, we suggest they should rebuild the regulatory system by boosting funding for regulators. And secondly, we’re asking them to replace the short-sighted ‘Growth Duty’, which has often led to regulators having to prioritise growth at the expense of key protections.

In its place, we’re asking Labour to adopt a ‘Fair Growth Duty’. This new duty would prioritise economic growth alongside key social and environmental outcomes, creating a framework for the sort of sustainable growth that drives up living standards across the UK.

This approach would not only iron out the inconsistencies in their own narrative around growth, it would also align the government with core public sentiment. Our polling with More in Common shows 79% of the public believe regulations are essential for a stable economy and secure society, whilst just 21% say regulations hold the economy back.

Pressure from Reform UK and ‘Blue Labour’ makes the task of building an enduring electoral coalition all the more important. A coherent approach to fair growth backed by strong regulation – rather than the shallow pursuit of GDP – could be the glue to hold that coalition together.