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The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, has called for an extreme reduction in the number of visits and investigations the taxman carries out each year, as the coalition attempts to curtail the administrative burden on firms recovering from the economic downturn.
Mr Clegg said government regulators including HMRC will be expected to join in with the Con-Lib ‘mission to liberate small businesses’ from excessive paperwork and bureaucracy.
‘[Regulators] need to understand that their job is to make your life easier, not harder,’ the deputy PM told a gathering of small business leaders in east London.
He added that, as past of the ‘culture change’ that includes the Cabinet Office’s Red Tape Challenge, which invites voters to suggest rules and regulations that should be scrapped as unnecessary or over-complex, the Revenue and similar bodies – the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Executive among them – could be limited to the amount of interaction they have with firms annually.
‘They will have to make sure they aren’t breathing down your necks,’ said Mr Clegg. ‘Why, for example, should regulators be able to turn up at your door whenever they want and as often as they want? Why can’t we limit the number of inspections to, say, two a year…?’
The end result of admin-axing measures ‘will be a system designed for busy, working people rather than a job-creation scheme for accountants and lawyers. And a system that saves you money,’ said the deputy PM, claiming British business had already saved £3 billion, and a further £600 million worth of cost reductions is in the offing.
