Among the many inducements offered by the proponents of Brexit to a gullible public was to reduce the burden imposed on our economy by European regulations, the so called 'red tape'. The concept of regulation (from the Latin for to rule) being a burden is attractive to anarchists but is somewhat paradoxical in the mouths of those whose objective was to take over the rule of our country themselves, as they are now finding out.
Every civilised society has acknowledged the necessity of regulation of the behaviour of their citizens, individually and collectively. Evil European regulations, preventing the UK from flourishing, therefore needed to be replaced by Good British ones which would allow us to release our natural entrepreneurial energies and become Great again. What an inspiring concept – no wonder it appealed to so many!
Since it now appears that our recently acquired UK Government is bent upon fulfilling this promise, it is worth looking at some possible implications. I think it is not intended to remove regulations that hinder the entrepreneurial activities of thieves or the homicidal inclinations of those who wish to drive at 100mph through villages. Rather, the implication is that they wish to free industry in general from regulations that make them uncompetitive with other countries, thus making our products cheaper than theirs. Which regulations they have in mind remains unknown at present, but presumably they include ones that increase the costs of employing people and producing goods. I have a little personal experience of this sort of regulation.
In 1990, towards the end of the Thatcher Government, I was asked to chair a committee to advise on regulations to control air pollution in Britain. We selected a group of people expert in epidemiology, medicine, meteorology, toxicology, occupational hygiene, and so on, and invited them to take part, supported by expert scientific civil servants. We met for a day every month or two for over a decade, each time taking a burden of work to do in our spare time, and over that period we produced evidence-based recommendations on the 10 most important ambient air pollutants with adverse health effects on humans.
It was quite hard but very interesting work, mostly done in our own or our employers' time, for which we received an expense allowance for our day away and a small sum which would have worked out at about the minimum wage for that day's work. We did not complain as we enjoyed doing this and most of us were salaried at the time, but I make the point to indicate that government certainly got good value for its money.
At the beginning, I asked why the then Conservative Government was so keen at that point on regulating all these pollutants. You may guess the answer: the EU was discussing doing this, and they wanted us to get our views in first. Very sensible! So, we worked hard, wrote our reports, and sent them to the various ministers. All were accepted, passed into law and, crucially, then discussed in Europe and became, with minor amendments, EU regulations. This was the process of regulation, and the UK was frankly pretty good at it, looked at with envy by the USA where the process is fought over by lawyers.
You might ask why it is necessary to have the same regulations in different countries, and this is the question the Farages and Trusses of this world have been asking – why not allow us a free market, free of constraints? And the answer relates to the concept of a level playing field on which no side has an unfair advantage. Those who wish to have a bonfire of regulations aim to play on a field that slopes in their favour.
Once upon a time, Great Britain (but not Ireland) played on that field. Overseas we imported and exported slaves to toil in our colonies. At home we sent children and women to work in dangerous factories and to suffocate up chimneys or drown in coal mines. The cotton that the slaves picked, and the children and poor women spun and wove in our mills, powered by the coal those poor families dug out, did indeed make Britain Great.
Then, one day, Robert Peel (the father of the Prime Minister of the same name) visited one of his factories in Manchester and was shocked at the sight of the pauper children working there, introducing the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act of 1802. This reduced their hours of work to 12 and obliged employers to give reading and arithmetic lessons, primarily so they could read the Bible. While this experience in his own factories led to him working effectively to regulate employment in factories and other trades, he also became one of Britain's first millionaires.
Slowly, regulations changed, stopping employment before the age of nine and eventually limiting hours to 10, introducing inspectors and even medical supervision of workers. Every move to regulate employment in mills and factories was resisted tooth and nail by the employers, as indeed were abolition of slavery, the prevention of children being employed in mines and sent up chimneys, and every other step towards a decent society. In many countries they still are.
The story of increasing regulation is too long to tell here, but essentially the cloth hats fought for it, sometimes literally, and the top hats opposed, the latter always postponing regulation until one of their number found a social conscience and was sufficiently influential to achieve change. The most notable such top hat was the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, one of very few famous Anthonys in British history. It would be amusing were it not so sad that even today a top hat is at the forefront of the fight against regulation in parliament.
Let's return to the level playing field. If you produce something to sell in a competitive market, you can improve your profits by making it better than that of your rivals or you can cut your production costs. The latter is easier if you exploit your workers by giving them worse pay and conditions than your rivals do. If you neglect putting in safety equipment and they are injured or poisoned you could sack them, knowing they don't have the resource to sue you. All this and more are made harder by appropriate regulation.
A good employer welcomes regulation that improves the welfare of the workers, so long as it applies equally to rival enterprises. In a Common Market, justice requires regulation to apply equally in all countries involved. Brexit's glorious future was predicated on a bonfire of the red tape, clearly implying that employers in the UK will be released from many of their obligations under EU law, all of which were introduced as I have indicated with significant and usually leading influence from the UK. And such a bonfire, as on every 5 November, has unfortunate consequences. Hence my title.
Not only the air we breathe, but also the food and water we consume, and almost everything we buy is subject to regulation to ensure that we, the consumers, are safe. Think, for example, of food labelling and allergy warnings. We are living through dangerous times and the poor of this country, many of whom were fooled by the Brexiteers, are especially vulnerable.
It would be a tragedy if our first black Chancellor, a well-educated historian whose parents came from one of the countries whose exploitation helped make Britain Great, is leading us back to a place which it took us over a century to get out of. I hope there are some good top hats on the government benches who have the courage to oppose these moves and that all the opposition parties seek common cause in resisting them.
Reduced standards drive poverty and ill health. Let's see red tape for what it is: something associated with Christmas presents, much nicer and more benign than the bloody bandages of injured workers.
Anthony Seaton is Emeritus Professor of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at Aberdeen University and Senior Consultant to the Edinburgh Institute of Occupational Medicine. The views expressed are his own
