We published Right-touch regulation in 2010 without much of a fuss. Not making a fuss is part of our way of working. We think that the quality of our work should speak for itself; if it’s good enough other people will read it and use it. If it’s not good enough it’s best forgotten. Quite quickly people did start referring to right- touch regulation, asking us about it and trying to apply it to their regulatory tasks. By 2015 it was widely influential and we revised our original paper to take account of what people had told us about their experience of putting the principles into practice.
Now it seems timely to learn again from others’ experiences of using right-touch regulation. The varied and interesting papers in this publication set out the interesting and varied ways in which different regulators in different sectors, in different jurisdictions have applied right-touch regulation to their particular problems and challenges.