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James Lowman
Chief Executive
Getting Results: Regulation vs Education
15 February 2010
Long train journeys back from Scunthorpe on a Friday evening give one plenty of time to reflect on the week’s events, so please forgive me for a slightly more ruminative blog than usual.
My thoughts (around Thorne South) began to wander to the issue of cause and effect, and whether lifestyle changes are driven by Government policy. By the time I got to Doncaster, it struck me that the more important question was whether changes in lifestyles in line with Governments’ wishes justified future policy interventions or made them redundant. So far, so abstract, so I’ll give you some real examples.
On Wednesday last week I attended and spoke at a (very good) roadshow run by the Spar wholesaler James Hall & Co. On the platform immediately before me was James Walton from the IGD, who conveyed a wealth of information about market and consumer trends with his usual thoroughness and dry wit. The one slide that stood out for me showed changes in food consumption habits between 1998 and 2008 (data from the DEFRA Expenditure & Food Survey). In general terms, this showed that the British public are more likely to eat healthier products than they were twenty years ago (and I’m aware that this raises a host of definitional problems about what a healthy product is and so on, but I think the data gave that clear overall impression).
Given this, should the Government be regulating more to promote even healthier diets? Have these trends been driven by the Government or by individuals’ choices? There is strong evidence that campaigns like 5-a-day have really penetrated the public consciousness, but this has been through education rather than regulation. I’m biased because of ACS’ partnership with Change4Life, but I think this sort of practical awareness campaign strikes the right balance.
In other areas, this balance may be skewed and doesn’t seem to be generating the intended results. Also last week, we saw data on poverty showing that after 13 years of Labour government, the gap between rich and poor had widened. The Government used this as a platform for arguing that the National Minimum Wage should be increased further. As I approached Newark North Gate, this link between cause and effect seemed a little strained. The National Minimum Wage has been in place since 1999, rising at rates above inflation almost every year. While I don’t think anyone would attribute the widening of the gap between rich and poor to this factor, it’s clear that the minimum wage alone has not led to the closing of this gap. So why the Government response that the minimum wage should increase further when this has already been tried and failed? What are the real underlying reasons for the growth (outrageous for a civilised society in the 21st century) in the gap between rich and poor?
The third area where cause and effect bothered me (leaving Peterborough) was around tobacco. In forty years we’ve seen the proportion of British adults smoking halve. Rates of youth smoking are going down annually. So has this decline in smoking been caused by new regulations – banning smoking in public places, or changes in advertising laws – or by factors that have nothing to do with the Government? Maybe regulation has played a part, but at best it’s been subsidiary to the main cause: a change in culture and attitude driven by information, education and individual choice. The decline in smoking rates is a case against further regulation, not for it.
I’m certainly not a libertarian or free-market disciple, but by the time the train heaved into Kings Cross I’d decided that Government intervention on matters like this can rarely be the direct cause of positive change. Worthy regulations don’t always have the intended effect, and where positive change takes place we need to properly understand the role that Governments have played in this before convincing ourselves that further regulation is the answer.