Speaking at AMI’s annual dinner in London last night, Gummer said: “When you’re [the regulator] helping us to do it properly, start off by listening to the experience that we have. Because the European Union has made it clear that’s what they’re going to do.
“I’m going to take it at their word and say: if that’s how the EU is going to do regulation, then that’s how regulation ought to be done and we will help you do it well.
“But, woe betide you if you ever lose that element of listening to those who do the job and move to telling them what they ought to do, then that deal is off.
“We want to provide the best service we can to the market and to the people straight across the nation.”
Gummer, a former cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government who famously fed his daughter a burger at the height of the Mad Cow disease scare, went on to say that regulators and politicians should take time to think about the impact of future regulation.
He said: “What we need from regulators is a period of calm where we know where we are and where we are not disadvantaged from our colleagues in the European Union. We need a period where we do not try to regulate every single part of the job.
“It seems to us that current regulation is based upon some rather rational and sensible principles however we do not want you to be too encouraged in case it pushes you further from that. But so far can we say thank you.
"And can we encourage you to be clearly rational about the issue and not seek to legislate where clearly it isn’t necessary and clearly listening to those who are actually doing the job. If regulators remember that, we can expand and extend what we do.
“Do please listen to those who are doing the job of actually facing the customer and helping to make the biggest decisions, which for them, are the biggest decisions of their lives. It isn’t easy and it isn’t helped by being told, every single individual has to have 40 pages of explanation about everything that they do."
Gummer also spoke about the individual freedom homeownership offered people and said regulation must not harm the opportunity to access this.
He suggested personal citizenship was encouraged by owning a property and that political uprisings in Egypt coincided with low homeownership and barriers to entry.
