David Cameron Pledges to Cut Red Tape for Small Business

Thousands of rules affecting business are to be scrapped or amended, David Cameron has told a Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) conference.

More than 3,000 rules will be dropped or changed, saving more than £850m a year, he told the FSB.  They include 640 pages of cattle movement guidance, 286 pages of hedgerow regulations and 380 pages of waste management rules.

Mr Cameron said he wanted to “get out of the way of small business success.”  He said his government would be the first in history to end a term in office with less regulation on the statute books than when it came into power.

Reducing red tape, cutting business rates, and scrapping the jobs tax from April 2015 were ways the government was supporting small businesses, said Mr Cameron.

He said, “We need to be a country that celebrates enterprise and backs risk takers,” and citing some regulations, he thought should go, Mr Cameron said, “If you want to sell oven cleaner in this country you need to have a poison licence.”

Other reforms that have been or will be implemented under the government’s Red Tape Challenge include:

• Environment: new guidance on contaminated land and hazardous waste • Food labelling: regulations to be reduced from 30 to 17
• Road transport: 142 regulations “scrapped or improved” – 36 million vehicles will no longer need a paper tax disc
• Aviation: 48 out of 83 regulations “scrapped or improved”
• Health and safety: “at least one million self-employed” removed from health and safety regulation, and more than 100,000 “low-risk businesses” exempt from inspections
• House building: 100 “overlapping and confusing standards” applied to new homes reduced “to less than 10” – estimated saving £64m

The Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) will have slashed 80,000 pages of environmental guidance by March 2015, saving businesses around £100m per year, the government said

Other proposed measures for small businesses include a £1.1bn package of business rates relief, £100m of broadband vouchers to help businesses get online, and up to £2,000 each in growth funding for 20,000 small businesses.