Time is Money: How Regulators Can Support Growth (Industry and Regulators Committee Report)

Lord Ashcombe Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as an employee of Marsh. I warmly welcome this report and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and her committee on what is an extremely useful piece of work looking at the cost of regulation. It gets to the heart of the debate we have returned to many times in this House and does so with commendable clarity. This debate has been running for some time. I want to suggest that a clear consensus is emerging around three core pillars. What strikes me about the committee’s report is how powerfully it supports that framework.

The first pillar is sophistication in design and efficiency in implementation. Regulation that is blunt, where it should be precise, or rigid where it should be adaptive, does not merely inconvenience firms; it actively distorts markets and harms the very consumers and stakeholders it was designed to protect. Good regulation is not light regulation but intelligent regulation. The two are not the same, and we should resist any conflation of them. The committee is right to call for regulators to provide clear guidance early and ensure their requirements are unambiguous from the outset. That is not a procedural nicety; it is a prerequisite for any regime that wishes to be taken seriously.

The second pillar is the recognition and removal of fragmentation. The committee identifies directly that additional complications arise from companies where their projects are overseen by multiple regulators. This is, in my view, one of the most underappreciated structural failures in our current regime. When multiple regulators operate across overlapping domains without adequate co-ordination, the result is not merely duplication; it is the creation of blind spots. Firms fall between the gaps, risks go unmonitored and the cumulative compliance burden on those caught across multiple regimes becomes, in practice, prohibitive. I hope that the Government will treat this not as a long-term aspiration but as an immediate operational priority.

The third pillar is transparent decision-making. This is where I really want to linger, because I think that it is the main point; the committee’s call for clear guidance connects directly to it. If regulators must provide clarity early, the logical consequence is that they must also be transparent about how they will respond when things are unclear, contested or novel. Industry can absorb almost anything if it can plan for it; what it cannot absorb is uncertainty and the inability to anticipate how a regulator will behave. When firms face uncertainty, they do not take risks. They over-comply, over-report and over-resource.

The waste embedded in that precautionary behaviour is vast and almost entirely invisible to those who design the system, but—this is the point I do not want us to lose sight of—transparent decision-making cannot be achieved by regulators alone. It requires government to do its part. Regulators cannot be transparent about how they will resolve conflicts between objectives if government has never told them how those conflicts should be prioritised. That is a political responsibility. The strategic guidance and political cover that government provides, or fails to provide, is the foundation on which regulatory transparency either stands or collapses. The committee calls on the Government to play that role, and I believe that that call deserves to be heard very clearly.

I also commend the committee on drawing a distinction that previous reforms have consistently missed: the difference between the cost of paperwork and the cost of compliance. Reducing the administrative burden of form-filling is welcome, but it is a fraction of the real cost that firms bear when the system changes, with the structural adaptations and ongoing operational adjustments that regulation demands. If we focus on paperwork, we are, to use a familiar phrase, looking for our keys under the lamp-post. The committee has pointed us towards where the keys actually are.

I look forward with great interest to hearing from the Minister about how the Government intend to respond. The committee has done its work with rigour and purpose; I commend it on that again. The question now is whether the response will match the ambition of the diagnosis.

Sporting Events Bill [HL]

Lord Ashcombe Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 21st July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

My Lords, the more astute among your Lordships will have realised that this is the first time I have taken part on this Bill. I do so because, unfortunately, my noble friends Lord Markham and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, who led from these Benches on the Bill, cannot be here today. They both send their apologies. It therefore falls upon me to respond on behalf of His Majesty’s Official Opposition today.

We have broadly welcomed this legislation while highlighting a few areas where we have concerns and others where we have seen room for improvement. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, said at Second Reading that she wished the Government would be bolder, as noted just now by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, with the scope of the sporting events framework. While the Government have not yet fully taken her advice, it is welcome that your Lordships’ House has done so by adopting the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Evans of Bowes Park and the noble Lord, Lord Addington. The changes we made here last week strengthen the Bill and will, if the Government follow through on their promise to continue the debates we have had about them in good faith, enable many of the most well-loved sporting events in this country to benefit from this legislation. I hope that when the Bill goes to another place, the new Government will agree with the amendments made here or, if they wish to make some modest changes to them, will keep them in both spirit and substance.

I want to record our thanks to a number of noble Lords who have made this such a constructive process. My noble friends Lady Evans of Bowes Park, Lord Moynihan and Lord Fuller, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, brought their considerable experience and expertise to the Bill’s proceedings. I also thank the Minister, all the officials and the Bill team who have supported her for their willingness to meet noble Lords across your Lordships’ House throughout the passage of the Bill. I know that noble Lords found their discussions genuinely useful, and I am grateful that some of the concerns raised by the Opposition and others were listened to. This is a Bill that we hope will boost the ability of the United Kingdom to host major sporting events. It leaves this House in a better state than when it was introduced, and I hope it moves through another place in the same spirit.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lords.