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Richmond upon Thames Liberal Democrats:Covering the constituencies of Twickenham and Richmond Park |
Vince Cable Speech – British Chambers of Commerce
April 7, 2011 6:05 PM
• [Apr 07] Vince Cable: THANK you for the invitation to speak at this event, and your very warm welcome. The Chambers of Commerce have played a key role preparing me preparation for the position I now hold in government. While my experience as chief economist at Shell was invaluable, with some 93,000 staff it wasn't exactly an introduction to the world of the smaller enterprise.
The Richmond Chamber is a really lively group on my own home turf, and has a knack for homing in on issues that matter- they started a small business forum last October and have been pioneering bringing local business together with banks and the sources of finance.
I greatly appreciated the welcome you gave when I became Business Secretary, almost a year ago. You asked me to "push British business to the forefront of the new coalition Government's entire thinking". Since then, I must have written dozens of articles, delivered hours of speeches, and attended any number of regional roundtables, factory visits and Whitehall meetings with that intention in mind . .
Deregulation programme:
But I understand that it is not just new regulations which we need to control. Businesses, particularly new businesses, are often shocked by the sheer extent of existing rules, be they to do with health and safety, tax, environmental standards or employing people - and how they seem to have been designed without any sense of proportion. Or how they seem out of date, reflecting needs and priorities that are no longer relevant to the economy or society.
And often they reflect an entirely misguided view of human nature - a lack of trust in the commonsense of ordinary people to choose the right way to behave. The sort of 'statism' that goes against the liberal view of life, one based upon empowered, responsible individuals willing to take decisions for themselves . .
These measures build on the 'one-in, one-out' rule that we introduced last year - the idea that every department has to stop and apply a cost to any putative new regulation - and then find existing costly regulations to scrap if they want to go ahead.
It sounds like a pledge that could only interest a Whitehall connoisseur. But you may be pleased to hear that I am on the receiving end of a gratifying degree of complaint about One In One Out from my Cabinet colleagues. The complaint is that by insisting they work out the costs of what they are doing, I am introducing even more bureaucracy.
A bureaucracy to fight bureaucracy - the beginning of some sort of satire by Kafka. Or Joseph Heller.
But I prefer to call it "A taste of our own medicine". Forcing government departments to think twice is a cost we should be willing to pay it if means hundreds of thousands of small businesses saved the trouble of hours of extra form filling.
• Vince Cable Speech - British Chambers of Commerce [BIS Press Office Apr 07]
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