Conservatives vow to slash red tape
The Conservatives are today pledging to slash red tape, by pulping thousands of pages of guidance, and scrapping over one thousand targets.
According to the Conservatives, Mr Blair has introduced more regulations than any of his predecessors, and created a generation of “fat regulators” such as Ofcom.
John Redwood, shadow Secretary of State for Deregulation, announced plans for a major piece of legislation that would remove 11,000 pages of guidance and 1,300 “distorting targets”.
The party has identified 63 areas where regulation can be reduced, including making Parliamentary time to repeal the ban on hunting with dogs, abolishing the Government’s Office for Fair Access, reviewing the location of speed cameras, and rewriting the Financial Service Authority’s handbook.
Mr Howard said the Prime Minister had introduced nearly 3,500 statutory instruments in 2004 alone.
He added: “So it’s hardly surprising that Britain has fallen from 13th to 30th in the World Economic Forum’s league of government regulation since 1998.”
Mr Howard was particularly critical of regulators such as Ofcom, which he said had a payroll of £13 million last year – ten per cent of which went to its board members.
He continued: “Although business and consumers pay the cost of regulation in higher prices and lower profits, there’s a lot of money in regulation – but that’s for the regulators themselves.”
Other proposals include scrapping the National Policing Plan, along with police ‘stop’ forms, and abolishing six of the annual plans that local authorities are required to draw up.
