The Foreign Secretary has announced legislation to allow the Government to override certain parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol that have been put into effect in national law. As I set out in my recent IEA briefing paper, the Protocol is costing NI and the UK as a whole hundreds of millions of pounds, and […]
Social media giant Meta is appealing last year’s ruling by the CMA that its acquisition of GIF provider Giphy was anti-competitive and must be unwound. Before the ruling, Meta (then still known as Facebook) was fined £50m for failing to provide information to the regulator. Which makes it rather ironic that it emerged last week […]
Extricating ourselves from the EU’s costly and bureaucratic state aid control regime was one good reason to support Brexit – but one not without risk. And as it stands, the Subsidy Control Bill may not be dealing with the risks, as outlined in my colleague Matthew Lesh’s briefing published this week. The EU state aid rules are, […]
New minister for Brexit opportunities Jacob Rees-Mogg asked last week for suggestions of EU rules to reform. While some may reasonably point out that we’ve had a few years to think about this now, there is of course no time like the present. Serendipitously, the publication of my latest paper on a radical, pro-free trade regulatory […]
Now that COP26 has ended in tears, is it possible that the government will review its strategy of having all of Britain’s climate policy eggs in the ‘global leadership’ basket? When the UK’s decarbonisation target was set into law with the Climate Change Act 2008 it was acknowledged that, as we account for a negligible […]
So 21 June will not, after all, see the great restoration of freedom that we had hoped for. But while restricted businesses and their potential customers will be rightly disappointed, Step 4 (as the now-postponed June 21 roadmap stage is known) was never going to be a complete return to normality, and we should not […]
The BBC reports today that 20 million Britons are now living in areas that did not report a single Covid death in April. Despite that arresting statistic, the entire population of the United Kingdom is still living under restrictions that, even in March last year, would have seemed unthinkable. It is still a criminal offence […]
The British love nothing more than a story about a twee, mediocre national icon, bringing us together in slightly self-conscious, self-deprecating pride/outrage (delete as appropriate). So in these tense times, Marks and Spencer claiming violations of its intellectual property rights over the bafflingly popular Colin the Caterpillar cake has been gratefully seized upon. Last week, […]
It’s been plagued by accusations of bias and poor service – and now the head of the Financial Ombudsman Service, Caroline Wayman, has resigned amid a growing backlog of cases, with some consumers waiting years for a decision on their complaints about banks and financial service providers. But while it is easy to criticise the […]
The Information Commissioner and its Office (the ICO) are among the most high profile regulators in this country. They oversee and enforce compliance of data protection regulations that not only impact organisations here in Britain but, at least in theory, anywhere that the personal data of UK citizens is processed. They can impose huge fines, […]
The Better Regulation Task Force. The Bonfire of the Quangos. A Red Tape Challenge. Successive governments have acknowledged the burden of regulation in this country and tried to do something about it. But it seems, not to the extent of actually stopping passing more regulations or giving more powers and duties to existing regulators. This […]
The freedom to provide and use digital services is under sustained attack. The EU’s new Copyright Directive places a heavy burden on website operators who make user-generated content available — compelling them to filter suspected infringing content, in a misplaced attempt to turn back the clock and protect rights holders and newspapers from new ways […]
MPs on both sides of the house – including the Conservative Nick Boles and Labour’s Stephen Kinnock – are in favour of the UK opting for a ‘Norway style’ Brexit: inside the EEA (single market) but outside the EU’s political structures. Given that the various EFTA states are richer, happier (and less politically fractious) than […]
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) yesterday delivered its opinion in a case that could have profound implications for the EU’s future trade policy, and set an important precedent ahead of Brexit negotiations. Ruling on the process for concluding the EU’s free trade agreement with Singapore, the court decided that the deal includes elements […]
