Tory Leadership Contender James Cleverly Wants "One-In, Two-Out" Regulation Policy

Conservative leadership hopeful James Cleverly has announced a policy of introducing a "one in, two out" approach to regulations as a way of helping businesses grow.

Launching his canpaign in central London on Monday, Cleverly, the former Cabinet minister, set out his vision for "low tax, low regulation" country if he was to become the new Leader of the Opposition.

He also pledged to increase defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP – a rise from the previous Conservative government’s pledge of 2.5 per cent – and abolish stamp duty as it “stifles transactions in an already illiquid housing market” if he wins the next general election.

Cleverly pinned his leadership campaign on ending the “crisis in the confidence in capitalism” across the UK. He said the Conservatives needed to "turn" young people "into capitalists" in order to convince them to vote Tory again. 

“We need to unlock real growth again, and we need to show young people that free markets, not planned economies, are their friends,” he said.

“We need to turn them into capitalists, because too many people think that high taxes help them rather than holding them down.”

Cleverly, who was education secretary, foreign secretary, and home secretary when the Tories were in power, said that he would like to see policies to reduce the regulatory burden on businesses go much further.

“We used to have a one-in, one-out rule for regulation,” he said, describing a previous policy of the coalition government in the early 2010s, where if government introduced a new regulation with a cost to business for complying, departments would have to remove or modify existing regulations to make savings for business to counteract their spending. 

This was later upgraded to a one-in, two-out policy