Clause 4 - Annual and other reports
Enterprise Bill
12:30 pm
Mr Nigel Waterson (Eastbourne, Conservative)
That has put me on the spot. The short answer is no. The long answer is that it is not my task to produce criteria. I threw the Minister a lifeline: there must be a vast amount of guidance on how the regulatory impact assessments are produced for Bills such as this. It still amazes me that such a conclusion has been reached with regard to the Bill, but that is another issue. Something similar could be used as a guideline for the OFT. I hope and expect that the amendment will be accepted. If it is, I expect the OFT to set out its own guidelines. Rather than reinventing the wheel, however, it would be well advised to reach for that large tome, which must exist for the purposes of legislation. I suspect that even now it is working its way down Victoria street towards us.
I reinforce what the Department of Trade and Industry says about the extra costs at all levels of the proposed legislation. Burdens on business have risen almost exponentially under the Government. It is estimated that an extra £15 billion of costs has been placed on business. In January, the Ernst and Young survey concluded that the UK economy does not aid entrepreneurial endeavour. Few of us have the findings of the 2001 UK Global Entrepreneurship Monitor far from our bedside table. It concludes that the UK continues to lag behind countries such as the United States, Australia and Mexico in overall entrepreneurial activity.
The British Chambers of Commerce produced the figure of £15 billion of red tape. I suspect that that is already out of date, as was reported in the Financial Times on 25 March. Even that figure does not include the financial cost of the national minimum wage, which I notice went up yesterday or today. The Institute of Directors has attacked the Government's promise to cut red tape and, in a survey, 93 per cent. of its members believed that the problem of excess bureaucracy had got worse.
The British Chambers of Commerce have produced their own burdens barometer, which contains a long and detailed list of all the legislation and regulation introduced by the Government that they say cause extra burdens on businesses. There is not only red tape, but extra taxes. The CBI has just come up with its latest figure on business tax under the Labour Government, which it says has risen by £5.8 billion a year. That is a considerable increase on the CBI's previous figure of £5 billion. The list of red tape measures goes on and on: trade union recognition; maternity leave; additional maternity leave; parental leave; time off for domestic grievance; the right to be accompanied in such matters; the part-time workers' directive; the minimum wage; stakeholder pensions; the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999; and the working time directive.