John RileyE-commerce minister Patricia Hewitt opened London's E-business
Expo on Tuesday by declaring that the UK is one of the best places
in the world to do e-business.
Hewitt said the Government is driving through fundamental change
in the economy, but admitted her frustration at the pace of
telecoms deregulation.
"For me the number one priority is to drive competition further
and faster into the telecommunications marketplace. I know that
many of you here will be frustrated by the speed and progress on
local loop unbundling. We would all like to have seen it
yesterday," she said.
Hewitt added that every country that has attempted to unbundle
the local loop has had problems.
She also promised to remove the contradictions between
Department of Trade & Industry guidelines on the monitoring of
e-mails and those of the data protection commissioner.
By January, Hewitt said, "we will ensure there is a single set
of authoritative guidelines to protect privacy."
On the eve of E-Business Expo, Conservative leader William Hague
told entrepreneurs that the Government should listen more to people
with a stake in e-business to ensure that the UK keeps its
advantage in a rapidly changing world economy,
In the e-business age companies can go anywhere in the world,
said Hague. "Therefore, if we have tax advantages we should widen
them rather than close them, and if our regulations are better we
should accentuate them, not harmonise them away," he said.
Hague's e-plans
