The UK should position itself as a “test bed” for European Union tech regulation, the chair of the government’s Regulatory Innovation Office has told MPs, warning that the government’s drive for “dynamic alignment” must not wipe out Britain’s post-Brexit advantages.
David Willetts gave evidence to the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee on 14 July, setting out the work of the RIO – a unit created to remove regulatory barriers to emerging technologies and speed products to market.
“David Willetts says UK should act as EU tech regulation test bed to retain post-Brexit advantages.”
While dynamic alignment with EU rules is an “understandable priority” for the government, Willetts said, ministers must take care not to eliminate the UK’s “advantages” in innovation and technology. He argued that both sides could benefit from a different approach.
“It was also in the EU’s interest for Britain to act as an ‘R&D tech regulation innovation test bed’,” Willetts added, helping the bloc design better regulations by learning from the UK’s experience.
The RIO’s chair framed Britain’s status outside the EU not as a weakness but as an opportunity: the UK can experiment with lighter-touch rules, gather data on what works, and feed that knowledge back to Brussels. In Willetts’s vision, the UK becomes a laboratory for governance of artificial intelligence, gene editing, and other fast-moving fields – reducing the risk of heavy-handed regulation that might stifle innovation.
The message carries weight because Willetts, a former universities and science minister, is no Eurosceptic. He chaired the UK’s first space agency and helped shape the government’s innovation strategy. His call for a testing role suggests a pragmatic middle path between full alignment and regulatory divergence.
Committee members did not challenge Willetts’s proposal, but the political reality is more fraught. The government has promised to “reset” relations with the EU, and tech regulation is a sensitive area. Officials in Brussels have shown little appetite for delegating any rule-setting to a non-member, even on a trial basis.
For now, Willetts’s idea remains just that – an idea. But it lays down a marker: if the UK wants to capitalise on Brexit, it must do more than copy EU rules. It must show it can regulate differently, and better, in the hope that others will follow.