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Over the last decade, research by the Department of Geography's King's Centre for Risk Management (KCRM) has helped successive UK governments to reform regulation by making regulatory inspection and enforcement more `risk-based'. Risk-based approaches promise to make regulation more efficient by targeting regulatory activities only at cases that pose unacceptable risks rather than by trying to prevent all possible harms. KCRM research has helped make UK regulation more risk-based in three important ways. First, KCRM research significantly informed the key recommendation of HM Treasury's Hampton Review of Administrative Burdens on Business that all regulatory inspection and enforcement should be risk-based. Second, KCRM supported the implementation of that recommendation when it gained statutory force for almost all regulators in 2008 through practical advice to a number of government departments and agencies. Third, KCRM's impact on regulatory reform was reinforced by HM Government's full acceptance and ongoing implementation of Löfstedt's recommendations to strengthen risk-based regulatory practice in his 2011 Independent Review of Health and Safety Regulation.
Dr Robert Falkner's research into international risk regulation for emerging technologies underpins the work of the Nanotechnology Policy and Regulation programme at LSE. On the basis of this work, Dr Falkner was tasked by the European Commission to lead the first ever comparative study of nanotechnologies regulation in the EU and US. This research has stimulated policy debates in the UK and Europe on how to strengthen regulatory capacity in the field of nanotechnologies. The research has highlighted, in particular, the importance of improved transparency about nanomaterials in consumer goods and supply chains. This research finding has influenced the conclusions of the first UK parliamentary enquiry into nanotechnologies regulation and has informed a recent shift in global policy debates towards comprehensive and mandatory nanomaterials registers.
LSE research on endogenous risk has had impact at both the macro and micro level. At the macro level, it provided input for the design of the counter-cyclical measures and systemic risk surcharges in the Basel III regulations in financial markets. It also provided a significant input to the G20 agenda on financial stability. At the micro level, the research has had a significant role in shaping the thinking and recommendations of the UK Foresight Report on "The Future of Computer Trading in Financial Markets". Through this, the work had a direct impact on Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) II, the EU legislation that governs how EU financial service markets operate. The original EC proposal for trading halts in volatile markets — Minimum Resting Times (MRT) — to regulate high frequency trading was dropped and the Foresight proposal of time stamps based on synchronised atomic clocks across trading venues was adopted.
Much contemporary government activity involves regulation of the economy and society. International organisations have increasingly promoted regulatory impact assessment as a tool to appraise the likely costs and benefits of regulations. Ground-breaking research by a team at the Centre for European Governance (CEG) has exposed the limitations of narrow economic approaches to regulatory impact assessment and regulatory reform. The research shows that impact assessment and regulatory measures need to be cast in their political and administrative context to operate effectively and to ensure appropriate cross-national learning about regulation. The main impacts have been:
An AHRC and ESRC-funded Edinburgh research collaboration with the Argentinian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovative Production (MOST), from 2007-2012, served as a key driver in the formation of regulatory structures, norms, knowledge and social understanding, helping to overcome state non-intervention in the regulation of regenerative medicine. As a direct result of engagement with the stakeholders in law/policy, medical and scientific communities, the research exposed a strong appetite for top-down legal intervention. This culminated in the first-ever model law presented by the MOST to the Argentine legislature (Congress) in 2013.
LSE research on regulatory enforcement and compliance has challenged the assumption that businesses are capable of self-regulation, particularly in sectors critical to public health such as the food business and particularly in terms of small businesses that rely on government regulations to help them identify and manage business risks. This research became the basis for four specific recommendations on the regulation of food hygiene and safety that emerged from a UK Government inquiry into the 2005 E.coli outbreak. All four recommendations have been implemented and mainstreamed into the practices of the Food Standards Agency (FSA). Collectively, they have contributed to a substantial increase in business compliance with food safety standards and a significant reduction in businesses giving 'cause for concern' around transmission of E.coli and other food-borne pathogens.
Boeger has co-produced a highly influential body of collaborative work on telecommunications regulation which had direct impact across the EU. It has led to: substantial reform of Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications ("BEREC") and its Office's working methods; dialogue shaping across the EU Commission, European Parliament, and Member States; influenced an EU Parliament report; and has been the driver of inter-institutional pressure on BEREC and its office. In summary, the research kick-started and directly shaped the substantial changes to BEREC and its office both now and for the future, and is a key reference point. The overall aim is to improve the co-ordinated regulation of telecoms markets across the EU.
Research by the UCL Centre for Law and the Environment has directly influenced government policy and practice on environmental regulations, enforcement and sanctions. It has:
Ethics regulation across UK institutions has undergone two decades of rapid change and has sometimes resulted in fragile, controversial and difficult regulatory processes. Research by Hine, Peele and Philp has given rise to a better understanding of the conditions under which institutional ethics regulation and standard setting is more likely to be effective. Their findings have contributed to the clarification of the ethical principles that guide the codes of conduct in the UK public sector; shaped the institutional strategies of regulators (in particular the Committee on Standards in Public Life and the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority); and influenced international debate on standards in public life.
The findings of University of Reading research around the contemporary proliferation of `regulatory myths' and media misrepresentation of health and safety law have been used by a number of stakeholder organisations and charitable bodies in evidence given to official Government reviews, and drawn upon by those reviews as part of the development of policy recommendations for Government. By reshaping the policy debate around public perceptions of safety regulation, the innovative analysis of this phenomenon developed in the research output has allowed key actors to understand and draw attention to a major policy problem in a more coherent and principled manner.