Like “Pete Doherty vows to stay off drugs”, the headline “Gordon Brown announces crackdown on red tape” is regularly dusted down and re-used. No one believes it this time any more than the other dozen times they read it, but still for some reason it is considered to be news.
On Tuesday the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) put into perspective the Chancellor’s latest blitz on red tape, which included a promise to cut red tape “by a quarter”. Even if Mr Brown really did intend to do away with one in four regulations, it would still leave quite a lot. The annual cost to business of regulations introduced since 1997, the BCC calculates, is £50.27 billion.
It goes on to quote a couple of petty examples reported by its members: the accountancy firm that was told by health and safety inspectors that a bay window is unacceptable in its office; the poultry farmer who has to send his fork-lift truck drivers on a £250 course for a licence that must be renewed after just three years (why should a fork-lift truck driver suddenly forget how to do his job after three years is up?).
There are plenty more examples where these came from. When, last winter, I was asked to write a book on red tape, my first reaction was: how can I make a whole book out of that? I need not have worried. I started by visiting the website of the Office of Public Sector Information, which lists all recent legislation. The legislation is remarkable not just for its bulk but for how tiny a proportion of it is ever debated in Parliament. The 29 Acts of Parliament that became law in the 12 months to May 31 this year are dwarfed by the 3,592 statutory instruments — orders and regulations introduced without reference to our elected representatives.
No less remarkable is the number of times that the Government has tried to convince us that it is seeking to free people and businesses from unnecessary rules, while simultaneously doing just the opposite. Indeed, on the very day Mr Brown declared his latest war on red tape, the Government slipped into the Companies Bill a clause demanding that companies list all their suppliers in their annual reports. It will be fascinating to know where BP sources its paperclips, but I cannot see how it will improve the running of business.
There have been a few pieces of deregulation in recent years, but invariably they have been accompanied by more than a hefty dollop of new laws. Tessa Jowell’s gambling Bill was trailed as a piece of deregulation — obscuring the fact that the relaxation of rules to enable the creation of a supercasino were outweighed by absurd pieces of nannying, such as imposing a maximum value of £5 on soft toys given as fairground prizes.
Before the 2001 general election the Labour Party memorably sent young voters a text message asking: “Who gives a XXXX for closing time?” and promising to liberalise licensing laws. This the Government duly did, in as much as they allowed pubs to open for 24 hours a day. The Licensing Act hasn’t quite proved to be a piece of deregulation for Anne Stephenson, however. She runs a Blackpool hotel that, for the benefit of residents, includes a small cocktail bar selling £90 worth of canned beer a year. Until two years ago she had to apply every four years for a licence to sell intoxicating liquors, at a cost of £30 a time. Now she must fill in four forms, one of them 21 pages long and demanding a scale drawing of her bar, besides photographs that have been authenticated by her solicitor, and pay £190 for a premises licence plus £37 for a personal licence.
I have studied enough previous “bonfires” of red tape to know what the outcome will be: the only red tape that goes up in flames will be that which makes life incovenient for the Government. In March 2005 the Better Regulation Taskforce, one of two quangos charged with the business of reducing red tape, published a 93-page report on ways to cut the regulatory burden. It noted the success of the Dutch in reducing red tape by means of a “one in, one out” rule — for every regulation imposed, another is stripped from the statute book. It then went on to suggest a few overbearing rules that should go. The Working Time Regulations, which now oblige even senior managers to keep a log of the time they spend working, just to make sure they are not working themselves too hard? The Employment Equality Regulations, which require employers to acquire a working knowledge of all the world’s religions and belief systems to guard against the possibility of accidentally scheduling an important meeting on a holy day for white witches? Er, no.
It recommended that the Government should consider scrapping the Trades Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, which obliges unions to hold a ballot every ten years to see whether their members want some of their money siphoned off in donations to political parties. In other words, the Government’s great battle against on red tape has so far focused on making it easier for union bosses to stuff Labour’s coffers.
Presumably, as a result of Mr Brown’s latest blitz on red tape, we can look forward to an end to all those pesky little rules that require ministers to hold votes every time they want to pass a parliamentary Act and to put themselves forward for all these expensive and unnecessary elections every four years.
How to Label a Goat: the silly rules and regulations that are strangling Britain by Ross Clark is published by Harriman House on Monday
