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The paper considers a number of factors that impact on the UK’s response:

• how macroeconomic stability and a flexible business environment provide the foundations necessary for a prosperous domestic economy, and how this is made more important by globalisation; and
• the importance of comparative advantage and new economic geography theories in explaining how globalisation impacts on businesses’ location decisions.

In the light of this analysis, the paper identifies priorities for the policy response to enable the UK to respond successfully to the challenges of globalisation.  In particular, it draws out five policy areas in which the UK needs to make substantial further progress in order to benefit fully and secure the gains from globalisation:

• the importance of meeting changing skills needs;
• strengthening the capacity for science and innovation;
• reducing regulatory burdens on business;
• ensuring that the planning system is flexible and responsive to changing economic needs; and 
• ensuring that the UK’s transport infrastructure supports a flexible and enterprising business sector.

Download: Click here to download the report from HM Treasury's website

Philip Hampton's review considered how to reduce administrative burdens on business without compromising the UK's excellent regulatory outcomes.

He finds that there is much good practice in UK regulation, but also that the system, as a whole, is complicated and good practice is not uniform. Overlaps in regulators’ activities mean there are too many forms, too many duplicate information requests and multiple inspections imposed on businesses.

The Review proposes entrenching the principle of risk assessment throughout the regulatory system, so that the burden of enforcement falls most on highest-risk businesses and least on those with the best records of compliance. At present, not only are unnecessary inspections carried out, but necessary inspections are not carried out. Under the proposals in the report, inspection rates would be reduced where risks are low, but enhanced where necessary.

The Review estimates, based on regulators’ past experience, that comprehensive risk assessment in a streamlined structure could:

• reduce the need for inspections by up to a third, which means around one million fewer inspections; and
• reduce the number of forms regulators send out by perhaps 25 per cent.

In addition, the review recommends:

• making much more use of advice, again applying the principle of risk assessment;
• substantially reducing the need for form-filling – in practice, most businesses’ most frequent and direct experience of regulatory enforcement – and other regulatory information requirements;
• applying tougher and more consistent penalties where these are deserved;
• reducing the number of regulators that businesses have to deal with, by merging 31 national regulators into 7;
• entrenching reform by requiring all new policies and regulations to consider enforcement, and use existing structures wherever possible; and
• creating a new business-led body at the centre of Government to drive implementation of the recommendations and challenge departments on their regulatory performance.