Red Tape is maintained by me, Robin Ellison; I am a solicitor with a major international law firm based in the City of London, a visiting professor at the Cass Business School at the University of London, working mostly in the field of workplace and personal pensions across the world, and author of several technical books on the law of retirement provision, trusteeship and investments.
In 2018 Cambridge University Press published my book (Red Tape) on how to manage excessive rule making and over-zealous regulators. It attempted a balanced review, avoiding a libertarian or anarchist agenda, but concluding that one of the main reasons for the extraordinary growth of regulation and regulators, and excessive intervention, was the lack of expertise in rule-making.
This site is dedicated to exploring ways of improving the education and expertise of lawmakers, so as to enhance their own understanding, make them less subject to criticism, reduce the incidence of poor lawmaking and improve the experience of citizens and firms subject to ever-increasing, and sometimes necessary, rules.
. . .you should be able to find on the site articles, blogs, materials and references dealing with the improvement of law making, and the behaviour of lawmakers, mostly in relation to the UK, and covering the activities of MPs, civil servants, public officials and regulators.
And as the site develops and improves it will include opportunities for establishing a community, making comments and suggesting improvements. As you might expect there are no rules – except that courtesy, tolerance and mutual respect are expected.
