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2. The review's work programme is underway and will be completed in July 2007. The business engagement completed to date confirms that there are a number of issues arising from the implementation and administration of regulation. While there will be some "quick fixes", many of the issues that are emerging will be more difficult to address and will require rethinking how we administer some laws. A third category of issues relate to underlying policy, which is outside the scope of this review.

3. The issues we will work on addressing going into the second phase of the review reflect three clear messages from the business community:

1. Regulators need to provide clear, accessible and user-friendly information to assure businesses of exactly what they need to do to comply with the law;
2. Regulators often take a one-size-fits-all approach to implementation that does not necessarily reflect the fact that businesses are different. Examples of this include licensing regimes that disregard prior track records of businesses; and
3. There are, as expected, issues arising from the interface between regulatory systems, for example, problems of duplication, inconsistency and uncertainty.

4. Submissions through the Business consultation website have been relatively slow. The interview-based approach that has been adopted for the sector and interface studies is resulting in good information, and both sets of studies are progressing well. These processes are only reaching the point where a significant body of information is available to departments and hence much of the identification and analysis of solutions is still to be done.

5. Many of the issues that are emerging are complex because to resolve them departments will need to assess whether they can in fact adapt the rules and their administration to the particular characteristics of businesses. I consider that Cabinet should make it clear that it expects departments to make this assessment. In effect, we are asking departments to demonstrate why they can't resolve an issue, rather than make a case for the status quo. Therefore, I recommend that Cabinet directs departments to reflect in their assessment of issues:

• The need to remove duplicated or overlapping regulatory requirements;
• The need to provide tailored information on regulatory requirements to meet the needs of business;
• The design of safe harbours, which means that if certain conditions are met firms are deemed to comply with the law; and
• More rigorous risk analysis when developing and enforcing laws.