Tories produce list of new bodies it claims Starmer’s administration has created

Yesterday Keir Starmer told cabinet ministers that the government should be taking more responsibility for decisions, and not outsourcing them to regulators. Overnight Downing Street followed that up with an announcement saying “the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) will be abolished as the latest step in reducing the burdens on business”.

It is not quite a full “bonfire of the quangos”. Many people won’t have even heard of the Payment Systems Regulator, and the small print of the announcement says that the PSR is not going immediately, and that when it does get wound up, its responsibilities will be taken over by the Financial Conduct Authority, which operates out of the same east London HQ anyway.

This announcement isn’t worth the paper it is written on, given the regulator that the government is supposedly abolishing is instead just being merged with another regulator – that it is already a subsidiary of.

Since taking office this government has created 27 new quangos and regulators – including Rachel Reeves’s Office for Value for Money, a pet project that has been slammed as a total waste of taxpayer’s cash.

Being repeatedly kicked by the other side and doing nothing is not an effective negotiating position. The business secretary needs to toughen up.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives would roll over and beg Trump for a bad trade deal that sells out British farmers and our NHS.