Editing Deregulation (section)

=== United Kingdom ===
The [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative]] government led by [[Margaret Thatcher]] started a programme of deregulation and [[privatization]] after the party's victory at the [[1979 United Kingdom general election|1979 general election]]. The [[Building Act 1984]] reduced building regulations from 306 pages to 24, while [[compulsory competitive tendering]] required local government to compete with the private sector in delivering services.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hodkinson |first1=Stuart |title=Safe as Houses: Private Greed, Political Negligence and Housing Policy After Grenfell |date=2019 |publisher=Manchester University Press |isbn=978-1-5261-4186-6 |pages=39–48 }}</ref> Other steps included [[Coach transport in the United Kingdom|express coach]] ([[Transport Act 1980]]), [[BT Group|British Telecom]] (completed in 1984), [[privatisation of London bus services|privatization of London bus services]] (1984), [[bus deregulation in Great Britain|local bus services]] ([[Transport Act 1985]]) and [[privatization of British Rail|the railways]] ([[Railways Act 1993]]). The feature of all those privatizations was that their shares were offered to the general public. This continued under Thatcher's successor [[John Major]].{{citation needed|date=December 2022}}

From 1997 to 2010, the [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] governments of [[Tony Blair]] and [[Gordon Brown]] developed a programme called "[[Better Regulation Commission|better regulation]]". This required government departments to review, simplify or abolish existing regulations, and a "one in, one out" approach to new regulations. In 1997, Chancellor Brown announced the "freeing" of the Bank of England to set monetary policy, so the Bank was no longer under direct government control. In 2006, new primary legislation (the [[Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006]]) was introduced to establish statutory principles and a code of practice and it permits ministers to make [[Regulatory Reform Order]]s (RROs) to deal with older laws which they deem to be out of date, obscure or irrelevant. This act has often been criticized and was described in Parliament by [[Patrick Jenkin|Lord (Patrick) Jenkin]] as the "Abolition of Parliament Act".<ref>{{cite hansard|url=https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2006-07-03/debates/0607031000003/LegislativeAndRegulatoryReformBill|date=July 3, 2006|accessdate=August 1, 2021|title=Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill|volume=684|speaker=[[Patrick Jenkin]]|house=HL}}</ref>

[[New Labour]] privatized only a few services, such as [[Qinetiq]]. But a great deal of infrastructure and maintenance work previously carried out by government departments was contracted out (outsourced) to private enterprise under the [[public–private partnership]], with competitive bidding for contracts within a regulatory framework. This included large projects such as building new hospitals for the [[National Health Service|NHS]], building new state schools, and maintaining the [[London Underground]]. These were never privatized by public offer, but instead by tendering commercial interests.{{citation needed|date=April 2016}}