Governments of all parties and the EU have progressively attached greater importance to ‘consultation’ on proposed future legislation.

The BSIA is duly responding to growing numbers of consultations on a wide range of issues, including the European Directive on Services in the Internal Market, Electrical Waste and the Working Time Regulations. Not to mention UK legislation such as the Civil Contingencies Bill and the Fraud Act (to name but a few!).

We do so on behalf of our Members to help ensure that matters likely to have an impact on them are fully considered. The BSIA enjoys considerable lobbying success with organisations like the Security Industry Authority, the Association of Chief Police Officers and the British Standards Institution – where we have been instrumental in changing policy that would otherwise have caused unnecessary disruption to industry and its customers.

However, we don’t feel that Government listens as attentively. Even on those issues where we have a strong mandate (the original consultation on the Private Security Industry Act 2001 springs to mind), many changes were subsequently made which bore no relation to the body of informed industry opinion.

We welcome the opportunity to engage in Government consultations, but we’d like to see more evidence of well-informed business views being adopted.

Stephen Adams is marketing and export services director at the BSIA

Source

SMT