Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps he is taking to reduce the cost of regulation for businesses.

It is essential that we identify areas where the costs of regulations may be unnecessarily high and burdensome for businesses. Best practice analysis of regulatory interventions and reforms, as well as monitoring and evaluating the success of interventions will help us understand these issues further. The Department for Business and Trade is in the process of developing an ambitious regulatory reform agenda to ensure that any future regulation or regulatory reform will work for businesses and consumers, and aids economic growth. Our proposals will be set out in due course.