Are bureaucracy and red tape strangling the UK IT industry?
Hague
We believe in deregulation in general. We will
review the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) legislation to
try and ensure the bill is not onerous on companies. The
Government's own Better Regulation Task Force asked the Home Office
to commission an independent assessment of the effect of the RIP
Act one year after its implementation - so that strongly supports
our view about the need for a review.
We will set up a deregulation commission that will have the power
to send back to Government departments any regulations that are not
proportionate or necessary. This would be a much stronger body than
the present Government's Better Regulation Task Force, with real
power.
In addition, we are going to create our own culture of
deregulation. We are going to stop gold plating the European
Commission directives and I am only going to promote ministers who
get rid of more regulations than they introduce.
These will be the management objectives of a Conservative
government.
The regulation of competition requires a balance between free
markets and intervention. This country has a long established
history of trying to strike that balance, but the balance isn't
right at moment.
Kennedy
Business people want to get on with running
their companies, creating wealth and providing more opportunities
for their staff. They should not have to spend large amounts of
their time acting as agents for the Government, coping with
interminable
 | | Business people want to get on
with running their companies, creating wealth and providing more
opportunities for their staff. | | | | | |
| | Source: Charles Kennedy | | |
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regulations and filling in endless forms.
We have published a list of 25 specific major regulations,
including IR35, which we will scrap. We believe any new regulations
should be subject to a "sunset clause", setting a deadline after
which they would automatically lapse. We will also consult business
before introducing any new measures.
My LibDem colleagues and I opposed many aspects of the RIP Bill
because it was unnecessarily intrusive
Hewitt
When I took up this job 21 months ago we had a lot of very visible
problems. Now we have a strategy, which has been in place for a
considerable time, and is based around getting markets right,
getting government right and getting people right.
Surveys from the Financial Times, Economist Intelligence Unit, and
Arthur Andersen, for example, put Britain within the top three
countries in the world in terms of business environment.
There is always a danger of adding unnecessary regulation as you
try and solve real problems. On IR35, for example, the original
Inland Revenue proposals would have been very damaging. We listened
very carefully to the IT industry and made changes but the fact is
most other countries have laws like IR35.
We believe in making the environment better for business. We have
just announced that businesses will be able to use their audited
accounts as the basis for their tax accounts. It is a good picture,
but we are not complacent.