Keynote speakers:

Dame Deirdre Hutton, Chair, UK Food Standards Agency, Deputy Chair, Financial Services Authority.
Sir Paul Judge, Chairman of the Royal Society of Arts' Risk Commission: Risk and Enterprise.
Prof. Nils Brunsson, Stockholm School of Economics, co-author A World of Standards.
Prof. Martin Cave, University of Warwick: Cave Review of Social Housing Regulation.
Rick Haythornthwaite, Chairman of the UK Better Regulation Commission: Risk, Responsibility and Regulation.

Objective:

This conference focused on the implications for regulators, inspectors and other regulatory actors of the changes currently being implemented to the way that risk is considered within regulatory regimes. Recent reviews of regulation have concluded that the aspiration of zero risk - risk elimination - is undesirable as well as unattainable. Government agencies, whilst maintaining essential protections, are urged to make clear to the public the limits of regulation beyond which the individual has to accept responsibility. This notion raises many questions, not least how will regulators, regulatees and indeed, the public, respond? Our aim was to foster discussion and an exchange of ideas on such questions between regulation practitioners and academics.

Programme

11 September 2007: 7.00 pm: Registration; 7.30 pm: Pre-conference dinner at Peterhouse
12 September 2007: 8.30 am: Registration; 9.00 am: Conference commences; 6.00 pm: Close.

Sessions included: Better Regulation                                Dealing with Risk in Different Domains
Regulating Risk: Enterprise and Communication         Responsibility and Regulation
Institutional Responses to the Regulation of Risk        Protecting the Public ... or not?
Regulating Risk: From Advice to Directives                     Regulatory Interactions with Regulatees
Responsibilisation: Regulating Perceptions                  Risk Tolerant Regulation in Practice

Session papers presented included:

- Robyn Fairman (Better Regulation Executive): Regulating risk. Building upon US and European
  experience.
- Simon Deakin (University of Cambridge): Reflexive Governance & the European Corporation.
- Philippe Lorino; Benoît Tricard (ESSEC Business School, France): Regulatory practices as
  activities.
- Steve Pointer (Health and Safety Executive): Taking account of risk in regulation - the HSE
  dialogical experience.
- John Ash (University of Cambridge): Risk, Regulation and Revenge - Changing the Focus of
  Risk Governance.
- Michèle Dupré et al (Modys, Lyon, France): The regulator-regulatee interaction.
- Mark Wagstaff (Housing Corporation): Principles Based Regulation: Stability, Risk and Trust.
- Laure Brévignon-Dodin (University of Cambridge): Regulation of emerging healthcare
  technologies.
- Chiara Scimemi et al (WIND Hellas, Greece): Evolving over moving ground: Absorbing
  introduced regulatory risk.
- Isabel Nisbet; Alan Greig (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority): Qualifications - regulation,
  risk & reputation.
- Tony Cox (R. A. Cox Risk Management): Regulating health and safety risks - the implications for
  enforcement.
- Henry Rothstein (King's College London): The Institutional Origins of Risk.
- Shann Turnbull (Int. Inst. for Self-Governance, Sydney, Australia): The Theory and Practice of
  Government De-regulation.

Further information:

Please follow these links for the full programme and conference papers.

Media coverage:

21 August 2007 Cambridge Evening News. Risky business up for debate at city event.
26 July 2007 New Statesman. The end of Risk.

Organizing Committee:

Paul Sanderson (University of Cambridge); John Brady (Anglia Ruskin University); David Seidl (University of Munich).

Regulation & Governance is essential reading for academics, regulators and regulatory experts throughout the world, providing a forum for original research, debate and refinement of key ideas and findings in one of the most important fields of the social sciences. Read the first volume of the Journal for free online at www.blackwell-synergy.com/loi/rego and for subscription and submission details, visit www.blackwellpublishing.com/rego.