Red tape stops us from making money

A Chamber of Commerce report released yesterday has shown that the cost of regulation and red tape to small businesses is running at £55bn. 70% of these businesses believe that the government is not doing enough to help them. One of the comments from the survey was "-A risk culture needs to be encouraged in Government – try making a pound instead of trying to save one-". This really sums up the government - they do not trust anyone to be able to run anything and so put all the regulation they can in place to put in the safe guards. All in order to save money - but what's the point in saving a pound when your the cost of saving it completely nullifies what you are trying to do?

Of course, the government are not happy with this report and argue that there are many benefits from regulations. Try telling that to the small businesses that are paying out £55bn a year! And to confound the fact that there is over regulation, Ministers want to see changes to commit to simplifying more than 500 regulations and reduce the administrative burden on business by 25pc and save "several billions of pounds over the next few years". So they admit we are over burdened with regulation, want to see change yet get upset when someone points this out and don't do anything. In fact things only get worse, despite the rhetoric from the government - in the last two years the burden from regulation has grown by £10bn. Stop telling us how best to spend our money - it is costing us £55bn a year and saves us nothing.