More regulation at EU level will bring savings

Government and regulation should be carried out at the level best fitted for the task in hand.

Let me give an example. While it is usual and right for the provision and management of waste collection and road maintenance to be at local level, the safety of medicines is of equal interest and importance to us all, regardless of nationality, so there is a European Medicines Agency to regulate the medicines market centrally, saving the need for and cost of 27 agencies at member state level, each doing their own thing.

There are yet more efficiencies to be achieved by passing other regulatory work from national to EU level. Telecommunications are such an example, now regulated by bodies in each of the 27 member states, quite cumbersome for this global, fast moving and highly innovative market. A private sector company operating with multi-national offices would long since have streamlined the structure.

UK's telecomms regulator Ofcom employs some 800 people; the proposed EU-wide telecomms regulator would start with a staff of 300. And in matters of defence, member states have 90 procurement programmes compared with just 23 in the US. Deeper co-operation in EU defence procurement could save up to 20% in national procurement budgets. It might have also saved the UK being the last to rescue stranded nationals in Libya, if we'd been co-operating on an EU basis.

EU governments are set to agree an increase in the EU budget of 2.9%. They should, at the same time, task the EU with regulation and procurement in areas of global activity, starting with telecommunications and defence procurement, to deliver even greater efficiency savings for us all.

Now is the time to invest in the EU and central regulation where it makes sense and see the investment pay dividends.