Regulators at Work

Abstract

It was an irony of the Thatcher government’s privatization programme that deregulation brought with it so much new regulation. Implementation and enforcement of the regulation of utilities unusually for the UK was placed in the hands of single individuals, on whom were bestowed extensive powers. OFTEL and the other offices that followed for gas, electricity and water are non-ministerial departments. In each case there is a Secretary of State responsible for appointing the regulator and issuing licences. This means that their accountability as generally understood in the British system is by no means straightforward. Indeed they have been described as ‘constitutional anomalies’ (Veljanovski, 1991, p. 16). There is a curious hybrid quality about the regulators, as also perhaps about their City counterparts. In some respects they resemble civil servants, but in others they are more like ministers and though neither civil servants nor politicians, they require some of the qualities of both. They are public figures, up to a point; they have a certain expertise, something rather unusual in British public life, indeed their expertise is argued by some to bestow on them their legitimacy (Prosser, 1997, p. 16). They give press conferences and appear before Select Committees of the House of Commons. They fight for their budgets like ministers. They are not elected as some US regulators are, but appointed for a period of five years or more and removal from office is very difficult.¹ However, unlike either civil servant or politician, a regulator is legally accountable.

‘Regulation is a business in which people can make a difference.’

Irvine Stelzer, OXREP 1988.