Oral Answers to Questions

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I would have thought it was fairly obvious that when there is an economic slump in the markets that constitute half our exports, it is rather difficult to expand into them, despite the competitive advantage that we have. There are deep structural problems. Many exporters genuinely have problems in getting access to bank finance or difficulties in getting access to trained workers. These are long-term structural problems that we inherited and are now trying to deal with.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

2. What steps he is taking to reduce business regulation for start-ups and small businesses.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

Through the red tape challenge, we have committed to scrapping, improving or simplifying at least 3,000 regulations. We introduced the ground-breaking one in, one out rule, which has saved businesses around £1 billion in regulatory costs; and from January we upped that to one in, two out. In addition, the micro-business moratorium introduced in April 2011 has protected the very smallest firms, and I hope that we can build on that when the moratorium expires next March.

[Mr Raab]

I thank the Minister for that answer. The Institute of Directors estimates that regulation costs British business £112 billion each year. I understand that the Government moratorium on new regulation applied to micro-businesses and start-ups, to which the Minister has referred, expires next year. Will he extend it for another three years in order to boost growth and get firms hiring?

[Michael Fallon]

We are looking hard at what we can do to extend that protection for the very smallest businesses from burdensome regulation from next year. In addition, we are pressing the Commission to make more proposals to implement its own commitment to a moratorium. We have seen a couple of examples from the European Union so far and we need to see more.