MPs have warned the government will need a “clearer strategy” if its plan to drive growth through regulatory reform is to be a success.
In March 2025, the Treasury unveiled an action plan to bring about a “new approach to ensure regulators and regulation support growth”.
This included a commitment to cut the cost incurred by businesses as a result of regulation, estimated at £22.4bn a year, by 25% (£5.6bn) by the end of parliament.
But a new report from the Public Accounts Committee, which follows evidence-gathering by the committee into the regulating for growth plans, says the government does not have a “robust plan” to achieve this aim.
HMT has set up a unit with the Department for Business and Trade to deliver on the action plan. But the PAC report warns that, 15 months on, the joint unit “lacks strong accountability measures to hold departments to account” on the target.
Departments have been asked to submit annual simplification plans identifying areas for improvement, with the HMT-DBT unit planning to publish analysis of the first set of these plans this spring. But the PAC report says it should go further and introduce milestones and regular progress reporting to hold departments to account, and report annually to parliament.
It also calls for the cost savings outlined in these plans to be independently validated instead of the current plan, which will see these validated by departmental chief economists.
The committee also said HMT and DBT “do not have a grasp on which regulatory interventions they should prioritise to achieve the administrative burden reduction target”.
The report, published today, says DBT has highlighted expected savings of £460m from the new planning and infrastructure and corporate reporting bills.
“This is clearly well below the £5.6bn target, and could be offset by costs generated by other pieces of legislation,” the report warns.
In a progress update published in October, HMT said it had identified £1.5bn of administrative burden savings, but the PAC report notes that this is a gross figure. DBT told the committee that it expects to report on the net position in the planned spring update.
The committee said the government was also "unable to explain how regulation achieves growth" and argued the government’s definition of economic growth itself “amounts to an ambiguous objective, the success of which is impossible to measure, given a lack of clarity about what growth it is seeking to deliver and when”.
PAC chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said: “This is a government that built itself around missions. One of these was economic growth, and it launched a simply titled action plan to help regulators deliver it.
"One would expect, then, that officials – when asked basic questions about how regulation might deliver growth, or indeed the target of growth itself – [would have provided this committee] book, chapter and verse.
"Alas, we received neither chapter nor verse and only the faintest inkling of book. In place of a detailed strategy, government has all but asserted that regulation can deliver growth, without explaining how, or if they will know if it does.”
Responding, a government spokesperson said: “We have the right economic plan. We are overhauling the UK’s regulatory landscape to cut red tape, tackle excessive risk aversion and drive economic growth.
“We are already delivering £1.5bn in savings by slashing administrative burdens, sharpening regulators’ focus on growth, stripping out unnecessary planning barriers to speed up development, and introducing new sandboxing powers so tech firms can test and scale safely.”