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

Baroness Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Gill (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, warmly congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and her committee on this exceptional report. Having worked across the public, private, corporate and not-for-profit sectors, I entirely concur with its central premise: time is money. In my experience, unlocking growth is not about a lawless race to the bottom or having less regulation; it is about achieving consistency, interoperability and efficiency, with a confident, not defensive, approach from the regulators. Global investors look for speed and predictability, but, right now, bureaucratic silos and delays are costing the UK lost opportunities.

For me, two specific proposals in the committee’s report highly resonate. The first is the call for a single front door for multiregulator projects. Breakthroughs such as AI medical tools or autonomous delivery drones do not fit into historical boxes. A single portal for concurrent assessment would instantly slash time to the market. The second is the focus on improving the pace of decision-making via fast lanes. If a business has already cleared rigorous regulatory hurdles in a trusted jurisdiction, such as Japan or the European Union, we should offer passported compliance. Reinventing the wheel simply drives innovators overseas. I therefore welcome the draft proposals being discussed presently between the European Union and the UK on agriproducts, which will eliminate lengthy checks at ports. Trade and growth are not just about tariffs but trust and speedy flow of goods. That will lead to growth.

However, to truly support growth in a fast-moving economy, we must also address the compounding weight of legacy rules. I recognise that automated sunset clauses are politically controversial, but I am absolutely not suggesting a blanket eradication of laws. Instead, we should tie sunset clauses directly to digitalisation. As technology evolves, the administrative processes used to enforce regulation become rapidly obsolete. The Government should mandate that digital compliance frameworks and administrative reporting requirements placed on businesses automatically expire after a certain time—maybe five years. This would force the regulators continually to modernise their systems, strip away analogue red tape and transition to leaner, data-driven oversight.

Finally, we must also recognise that opening up digital markets is itself a powerful pro-growth policy. When we properly resource units, such as the CMA’s digital markets unit, to curb the market power of tech monopolies, we create the predictable level playing field that some smaller domestic innovators desperately need to scale up.

I conclude by asking the Minister an overarching question. Given that the IPPR found that 79% of digital-intensive UK firms view big tech dominance as a primary constraint on growth, will the Government commit to a modernised, enforced strategy that pairs aggressive digital market competition with targeted sunset clauses on legacy administrative reporting, ensuring that our regulatory state moves at the same speed as technological innovation?