Government must do more to unburden small businesses

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Fri 4th Oct 2002

A West Midlands MEP is calling for the government to introduce a raft of measures to cut red tape for small businesses after it was revealed that 2,866 businesses in the West Midlands Region have gone under in the last 12 months.

The total number of business failures in the region has increased year-on-year by 15.8%, the highest rate of any region in the country.

Liz Lynne said: “Over regulation is costing businesses hundreds of millions of pounds unnecessarily. The cost of administering the Working Families Tax Credit, for instance, costs British businesses £105 million every year. This cost hits small and medium sized enterprises the hardest and there is no reason why it cannot be passed onto the Department of Social Security to administer.”

In the European Parliament, Liz is waging a campaign to ensure that all European Commission proposals are subject to comprehensive impact assessments before being considered for legislation. She recently persuaded the European Liberal Democrat group to adopt this as official policy on the Temporary Workers Agency Directive, the only party group in the European Parliament to do so.

Commenting on this, Liz added, “They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. It is a brutal fact of life that unless legislation is properly researched, it can often achieve little except price small businesses out of the market. The bureaucrats in both Brussels and Westminster must pay far more attention to how their proposals are likely to work in the real world.”