Our main conclusion is that competitive discovery processes have potentially very important roles to play in the water sector, particularly at the wholesale level, where we know that we know relatively little about the economic value of water, including its spatial and temporal variations, and how to use it most wisely.
This Report is published as a contribution to the current debate in the UK on the prospects for the development of competition in water, sewage and sewerage services (henceforth abbreviated to ‘water services’), and on the forms that such competition might take. It does not seek to cover all aspects of relevant policy in the sector, but rather focuses on a number of key issues, concepts and trade-offs that appear to be of central importance for policy development.
Members of the Regulatory Policy Institute have been longstanding supporters of Cabinet Office initiatives to promote better regulation, from the earliest days of these exercises. The Institute has on occasion also undertaken research projects that have contributed to the initiatives. Whilst the following remarks are critical of the current proposals, they are nevertheless the views of ‘friends of the process’.
The primary focus of this paper is the contribution of “reverse eAuction processes”, characterised by on-line, descending price bidding, to NHS procurement strategies. There has for some years now been considerable interest in the use of such auctions in the procurement of goods and services by both private and public sector organisations. Over the last year or two, this interest has been particularly intense in the UK public sector, and it has been accompanied by claims of substantial gains when these types of arrangements are introduced.
A report prepared for the Cabinet Office Regulatory Impact Unit.
The substantial quantities of radioactive waste which exist in the UK largely as a result of the activities of government agencies or government owned companies since the 1940s, raise important and difficult questions concerning how trade-offs between both the levels and distribution of costs and environmental quality/safety associated with different waste management decisions.
This paper is concerned with how the institutional arrangements for dealing with issues surrounding radioactive waste management can best be developed. Our main focus is on those factors that at other times and in other industries have been shown to influence regulatory developments.
The Regulatory Policy Institute’s Better Government Programme was established to focus on practical proposals for improving accountability and transparency in UK and EU policy and regulatory processes. Consideration of political risk – uncertainty arising from actions or the structure of policy or regulatory processes – falls naturally within that remit and is topical at a time when considerable attention is being paid to risk assessment and management as an integral part of directors’ and financiers’ duties.
The Risk Commission was originally assembled under the aegis of the Social Market Foundation. The work was subsequrntly transferred to the RPI