The Government has done “sweet FA” to cut red tape and risks running out of time to take advantage of Brexit, Sir Iain Duncan Smith has told the Telegraph.
The former Conservative leader said Britain has “huge opportunities now” to “recapture some of the real dynamism” the economy needs and move away from the EU’s “unwieldy, burdensome” model of pre-emptive regulation.
But instead the Government has failed to act and could miss its chance completely.
Spending watchdog
Earlier this month the UK’s public spending watchdog found trade with the EU has been knocked by Brexit and businesses have faced higher costs, more paperwork and border delays since the withdrawal.
A report by the Public Accounts Committee found that while it was difficult to untangle how much of the hit to trade since the end of the Brexit transition on December 31 2020 has been caused by the pandemic and how much by Brexit, it was “clear that EU exit has had an impact”.
It said that far from freeing up firms to boost productivity and contribution to the economy, the “only detectable impact” of Brexit so far has been to increase the burdens on businesses.
The committee said the Government had “much more work” to do to ease the administration and costs woes suffered by firms.
Sweet FA
Commenting on the matter, Sir Iain said his taskforce has proposed around 100 measures to cut excessive red tape and build new flexible regulation for emerging industries.
Yet “the Government has done absolutely sweet FA about this since we delivered the report to them.”
“They should have been getting on with it now, and they still haven’t done a single element of deregulation since I produced the report,” he said.
Running out of time
Worse still, sir Iain fears that the Government is running out of time, more than two years on from the election and since the UK officially left the EU.
“If you want me to write the epitaph to this Government, it is full of wishful hope, but not of delivery,” Sir Iain said, warning that inexperienced ministers are too often “captured by civil servants” instead of driving the agenda.
“There is a lot to do and they think they have a lot of time to do it in, but they don’t. If we don’t get this done in the next nine months, most of this stuff, it is never going to get done, because we will be into the pre-run to an election. At that stage, what are you going to show?”
Instead, the burden of red tape is growing.
The Regulatory Policy Committee, the Government’s official adviser, estimates Boris Johnson’s administration added £5.6 billion to the regulatory burden on businesses just in the first year after the 2019 election.
Sir Iain said the opportunities are vast, including cutting the City loose of EU measures so it can compete on the global stage, ditching rules such as Mifid, freeing up the insurance industry to invest in more productive assets, and setting global rules alongside the US.
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