In response to the appointment of Andrew Bailey as the new chief executive of the FCA, he will be taking on one heck of a job, a large part of which must surely be to sort out the dreadful malfunctioning tangle accumulated over 25 years of unregulated regulation.
This, I believe, can only be achieved if the centrepiece of whatever strategy he adopts is an acknowledgement of and adherence to the Statutory Code of Practice for Regulators. This, after all, is supposed to be the Government’s statutory blueprint (that is, it is the law) for better regulation. Much of the current mess has come about as a result of the former FSA and latterly the FCA having been allowed completely to ignore it, and the powers-that-be having failed completely to enforce it.
In his foreword to the latest edition of the Code, Tory MP Michael Fallon (who seems since to have moved on to other things) wrote: “This Government is committed to reducing regulatory burdens and supporting compliant business growth through the development of an open and constructive relationship between regulators and those they regulate. The Regulators’ Code provides a flexible, principles based framework for regulatory delivery that supports and enables regulators to design their service and enforcement policies in a manner that best suits the needs of businesses and other regulated entities.”
So there you have it, Mr Bailey. Unless you take on and put into practice the requirements of the Code in a way that none of your predecessors ever have, nothing will change. And change is certainly needed, more so now than ever before.
Julian Stevens
Financial Adviser,
Harvest,
Bristol
