You can find the Business Secretary, Vince Cable’s, announcement today on regulation on the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills website here.

Given the ongoing review of the EU Clinical Trials Directive which I have mentioned a number of times on this blog, many of our members will be pleased with the following statement he made that:

‘Ministers will also be taking a rigorous approach to tackling EU regulations and gold plating. The Government will engage earlier in the Brussels policy process; take strong cross Government negotiating lines; and work to end so-called ‘gold-plating’ of EU regulations so that when European rules are transposed into UK law it is done without putting British business at a competitive disadvantage to other European-based companies.’

I noticed that ScienceBusiness is today reporting about Government moves to set-up ‘a single agency to supervise clinical trials.’ And some of you may have noticed the piece in the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday about red-tape preventing development of treatments in heart disease and stroke.    Both point to the Directive as a key factor causing problems.

And if you thought the UK was the only country looking at easing the regulatory framework you would be wrong.

Quite a live debate at the moment and I think we can expect more over the summer.   One senses that the Government is thinking of doing a ‘supermarket sweep’ of medical research regulation, putting it all into one basket.