Process over purpose
Why well-intentioned legislation sometimes creates bureaucratic barriers
On Sunday, our Adviser Sam Dumitriu highlighted a growing paradox in Britain’s approach to safeguarding nature: well-intentioned legislation designed to protect nature often has the opposite effect. By prioritising bureaucratic processes over purpose and outcomes, current laws offer the worst of all worlds. They fail to protect the environment and also prevent us from building the energy and transport infrastructure essential to decarbonisation.
This is part of a broader problem — the prioritisation of process over purpose leads to distorted outcomes. When we treat administrative compliance as the goal, we lose sight of the intended outcomes.
Legislation can also fail to serve its intended purpose because politicians are required to vote on complex regulations with limited time, information, and ability to stress-test. That’s not helped when the UK’s political system prioritises looking busy and constituency casework over the job of being a legislator. It’s worse for the entrepreneurial ecosystem because so few parliamentarians understand what it takes to be an entrepreneur or the competing pressures they face.
Take the example of the National Security and Investment Act. Its well-intentioned purpose is to allow government to scrutinise and intervene in business acquisitions, mergers, and investments that it believes will pose risks to national security. But its broad scope means that some startups and low-risk deals such as internal restructuring are unintended targets.
This all reflects an environment where the fear of making a wrong decision outweighs the benefit of trying a new approach. This “paralysis by analysis” leaves Britain with the highest energy costs in Europe and a regulatory regime that makes the investment environment more difficult for Britain’s entrepreneurs.
Addressing these failures requires better oversight as well as better regulation. That could include sunset clauses, formal review processes, and structured scrutiny from experts and practitioners after legislation has been passed. And there are many arguments for the reform of the House of Lords — not least its status as the world’s second-largest legislative body and the questionable expertise of some members — but the scrutiny and debate provided by the upper chamber should not be dismissed lightly; it remains a necessary, albeit imperfect, check on poorly drafted law.
This article was first published in Three Big Ideas.