Gordon Brown claimed in the budget that he was going to cut back the regulatory burden on business. I have visited two small businesses that were infuriated by the mound of extra work created by his tax credits. The idea of Mr Brown genuinely cutting any kind of burden of paperwork is grotesquely absurd. In Thursday's Daily Mail, Edward Heathcoat Amory did a superb job of demonstrating why Mr Brown is the last person to be believed when he claims he is going to do any cutting of regulation, waste or excessive paperwork.

This, after all, is the same Mr Brown who last year publiched the longest Finance Act ...in history, with 328 section and 42 schedules.

This is the same Mr Brown whose tax credits system has become a byword for complexity. His new pension credit....expects claimants, the elderly and the poor, to wade through a 16-page claim form and 18 pages of impenetrable notes.

This Mr Brown has also been a key member of the Labour government which has imposed a total extra regulatory cost on business, measured by the British Chamber of Commerce using the Government's own figures, of £40 billion since 1997.

That involved 23,222 new regulations - 15 for every working day.

...This is the Mr Brown whose ministerial colleagues have insisted that every horse in Britain must have a passport, that anyone wishing to replace a window must become a member of the Fensa (the Fenestration Self-Asessment Scheme), who won't let you change a light fitting in your kitchen without permission from the council.

Now they claim to want to cut regulation. This has something of a familiar ring to it. In 1997, Mr Blair set up a Better Regulation Task Force. In 1998, Mr Brown launched a Better Regulation Guide. In 1999, the Government passed a Regulatory Reform Bill.

Along the way since then, we've have red tape czars, check lists, action plans, panels and reviews. None of them has made the slightest difference.

Nor do the specific proposals in the Budget inspire any confidence at all. First of all, in a move typical of New Labour, the Government plans to set up two more new quangos, a Better Regulation Executive and a Better Regulation Commission, both within the Cabinet Office.

There they will join the Strategy Unit, the Delivery Unit and the Office of Public Services Reform, all created by the Prime Minister, all providing jobs for expensive civil servants.

I would like to offer a link to the full article but sadly I have not been able to track it down on the Mail website.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Tax and growth

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