Brown promises red tape action
Chancellor Gordon Brown today promised that the Government would cut red tape and move to a risk based approach to inspection.
He told business leaders in Downing Street that the plan would “break down barriers holding enterprise back.”
Mr Brown said the approach would maintain the standards “a good society needs” but enable businesses to be more flexible. There would be “no inspection without justification, no form filling without justification, and no information requirements without justification.
“A risk based approach helps move us a million miles away from the old assumption – the assumption since the first legislation of Victorian times – that business, unregulated, will invariably act irresponsibly. The better view is that businesses want to act responsibly. Reputation with customers and investors is more important to behaviour than regulation, and transparency – backed up by the light touch – can be more effective than the heavy hand.”
He said there would be a million fewer inspections a year, a 25 per cent reduction in form filling, a reduction in the number of regulators and the removal of “outmoded and unnecessary regulations”.
The Institute of Directors said that it welcomed the announcement, but that a complete change in Whitehall culture was required.
Regulatory affairs director James Walsh, said: “We need fundamental culture change across the whole Government machine. Regulators and civil servants need to focus on what they can do to boost our enterprise culture. That means a completely new set of priorities, with regulation used only as a last resort.”
He added: “This is the latest in a long line of Government commitments to ‘get tough’ on red tape. Every time the commitments get bigger. That is welcome. But the time for commitments is now over. We need action.”
Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said that British business should be sceptical about Mr Brown’s promises.
Mr Osborne said: “Every year Gordon Brown promises to cut red tape on business and every year he increases it. British businesses saddled with £40 billion of extra regulation under Labour will be very sceptical at his claim that he’s turned over a new leaf.
“So while some of the proposals he’s put forward are welcome, indeed many come straight from the Conservative Manifesto, we will see whether anything in reality actually happens.”
And the Liberal Democrat DTI spokesman Norman Lamb said the Government should get its own house in order.
Mr Lamb said: “This year’s Queen’s Speech contained 50 proposed Bills. We have got to tackle this obsession with regulating everything that moves. Regulation should be the last resort not the first instinct of Government.
“It is a bit rich for the Chancellor to challenge business over red tape when there’s such a mismatch between the Government’s own rhetoric and its abject failure to reduce the burden of regulation.”
