“They imposed an exceptionally large number of regulations on the financial services industry.”

The claim that the UK government imposed an exceptionally large number of regulations on the financial services industry is broadly supported by the evidence. Under the Labour government from 1997, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) was created as a single, comprehensive statutory regulator, replacing a patchwork of self-regulatory bodies. The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA) established a wide-ranging regime, and the FSA produced an 8,000-page Handbook of Rules and Guidance covering deposit-taking, investments, insurance, mortgages, and more. Andrew Haldane's 2013 Bank of England speech documented a roughly tenfold increase in primary financial legislation over a generation, with the FSMA running to 433 sections and 321 pages, compared to the Banking Act 1979's 52 sections and 75 pages. The Institute of Economic Affairs similarly noted a substantial increase in statutory regulation and in the number of financial regulators from 1979 to 2010. However, there is an important nuance. The same period was also widely characterized as "light-touch" regulation — but this referred to enforcement intensity, supervisory intrusiveness, and resource levels, not to the volume of rules. The FSA employed relatively few regulators and spent far less on supervision than US counterparts, and it relied on principles-based, risk-based approaches rather than heavy enforcement. So the regulatory architecture expanded substantially in volume and scope, even as its practical application was often described as light-touch. Farage's phrase "more than it has seen in centuries" is hyperbolic and not literally verifiable, but the core assertion — that the industry was subject to a very large and growing volume of regulation — is accurate. Sources: Andrew Haldane, "Turning the red tape tide," Bank of England / BIS (https://www.bis.org/review/r130411d.pdf); Labour's record on financial regulation, Oxford Review of Economic Policy (https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grt005); IEA, "Thatcher and the myth of deregulation" (https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/DP_Thatcher-the%20myth%20of%20deregulation_web_May.pdf); LegCo Hong Kong research paper on UK financial regulatory regime (https://www.legco.gov.hk/research-publications/english/2023in01-evolution-of-financial-regulatory-regime-in-the-united-kingdom-20230119-e.pdf)