How to regulate a regulator

This year’s GuildHE series of regulatory briefings has been a real highlight.

Informed, considered, and very influential, the reports have been essential reading at the Department for Education and of course the Industry and Regulators Committee of the House of Lords during the enquiry into the work of the Office for Students.

Indeed, submissions like these have been one of the reasons that it has been clear that the current critiques of the OfS go beyond the usual regulatory griping that is the small change of sector relations with the government.

GuildHE chief executive Gordon McKenzie closes the show with what amounts to a compilation album of recommendations – each designed to make the regulator more responsive and more accountable. He also punches accurately at the bruises that is OfS’ questionable independence from government, and limited use of student voices.

To be clear, this is all a call for better regulation rather than a removal of regulation or no regulation. The sector needs regulating. But it should be possible to regulate in a manner that at least attempts to satisfy everyone: students, ministers, the taxpayer, and provider.

To take one example – routine parliamentary scrutiny. Susan Lapworth and her team occasionally turn up to be quizzed on the issues of the day at the Commons Education Committee, but this is informal, unstructured, and ultimately of limited value in terms of regulatory accountability. McKenzie calls for routine committee scrutiny of the OfS annual report – something that is so transparently a reasonable expectation that one wonders why it doesn’t happen by default.

The answer, of course, is a limited amount of committee time and a desire among parliamentarians to use it to tackle issues that yield if not positive and tangible changes then at least the chance of getting on Newsnight on a slow Tuesday in February. You can’t really compel a Parliamentary Committee to do anything, although you can suggest (as, indeed GuildHE tried with other sector representative bodies late last year) that some things may need a look this doesn’t always work.

Of much more potential interest in parliament will be a restatement of the perennial need to regulate regulators, as it were. Currently all we have is a non-binding regulatory code and the ever-present thrum of public interest to keep our regulators in line (and OfWat is currently learning what happens when that thrum becomes a roar) – the case for doing the thing properly and putting some kind of tangible mechanism in place to monitor Regulatory Code compliance feels like something an incoming government may want to think about.