What do the Land Registry and the FSA have in common?

Answer. Both have recently announced an increase of about 30% in their fees and both attempted to justify the increase on the basis that after deciding how much they wanted to spend that was the percentage increase needed to balance the budget. In the private sector it is done the other way round – the costs the business can afford are based on the revenue expected to be generated. The Land Registry’s excuse for their huge increase in fees is that the smaller number of housing transactions means their income has to be generated from a smaller number of people and so the lazy option is just to impose a huge increase on those hapless people who have no choice but to pay whatever they demand. There is no evidence of any serious consideration of cutting out some of the fat to reflect the lower volume of business, no doubt because as they operate a monopoly and their fees are like taxes they can get away with charging what they like. Over at the FSA about 10% of this year’s budget is being used to pay staff bonuses. No doubt some of the staff deserve a bonus but so do many people in the private sector. However, many of the latter won’t get one because their employer operates in the real world and thus doesn’t have the luxury of being able to fleece their “customers” by imposing a huge increase in their charges. Indeed, in many cases their employees will be grateful to still have a job, even if it is on a reduced salary. Maybe the Competition Commission’s time would be better spent investigating monopoly state sponsored organisations like the Land Registry and the FSA rather than their frequent and pointless investigations into our supermarkets, which by and large compete strongly and offer their customers plenty of choice. And talking of monopolies, why is there only one Competition Commission?