The 84% is not to be cut - it's to be cut or improved.

It's in teh budget speech - "To reduce the costs and barriers that regulation and administrative burdens impose on businesses, the Government ... will scrap or improve 84 per cent of health and safety regulation"

I was discussing this with someone yesterday - does anyone know how they've come up with 84% (why not 83%, why not 85%). The IOSH article indicates that it's "167 of the 199 health and safety regulations considered as part of the Red Tape Challenge", and 167 is 84% of 199, but why 167, why not 166 or 168?

Does anyone know any rational basis for the numbers?

Forgive me, but what has Health and Safety Legislation to do with the Chancellor, the Budget or the Treasury?

Doesn't make any difference if they axe loads of Regs because the Act still remains the same, which is all encompassing.

Don't forget that we also have comply with European Directives and so we can't just axe loads of Regs on a whim.

Some of the Regs need axing or sliming down anyway though, IMO.

It is in the budget document "Budget 2012", Pages 45 & 46

http://cdn.hm-treasury.g.../budget2012_complete.pdf



Reducing burdens on business--

1.237 To reduce the costs and barriers that regulation and administrative burdens impose on businesses, the Government:

• will improve and reform the Enterprise Management Incentive scheme (EMI), which helps SMEs recruit and retain talent, by providing additional support to help start-ups access the scheme;

• by consulting on amending restrictions that currently prevent the scheme being used by academics employed by start-ups, and by more than doubling the individual grant limit to £250,000, subject to State aid approval;

• will consult on simplifying the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) energy efficiency scheme to reduce administrative burdens on business. Should very significant administrative savings not be deliverable, the Government will bring forward proposals in autumn 2012 to replace CRC revenues with an alternative environmental tax, and will engage with business before then to identify potential options;

• will scrap or improve 84 per cent of health and safety regulation, including legislating in 2012 so that ‘strict liability’ provisions in health and safety law will no longer hold employers to be in breach of their duties when they have done everything that is reasonably practicable and foreseeable to protect their employees;


• will rationalise environmental regulation to reduce costs to business by at least £1 billion over five years without reducing environmental protections, including introducing new contaminated land guidance in April 2012, which will save business £140 million per year;

• will launch sector-based reviews of regulation from April 2012 to ensure regulation is enforced at the lowest possible cost to business, starting with chemicals manufacturing, volunteer events and small businesses in food manufacturing; and

• has examined around 1,500 regulations through the Red Tape Challenge, over half of which will be scrapped or improved. The Government has also achieved a cumulative net reduction of regulation since January 2011 worth £3.3 billion to business, with 19 deregulatory measures taking effect in the first half of 2012.

The principal regulations that most of us deal with day in day out will remain the same. It is nothing more than window dressing by the government - and they know it. I find it ironic, even perverse, that this government are reducing the so-called regulatory burden on employers whilst at the same time proposing to introduce Fee For Intervention. Now that will really help struggling businesses!

We went through this same process here in western Canada some years ago, with a right-wing pro free-enterprise government, that had a "Minister of Deregulation" . Since the regulation making process here has always included significant stakeholder (read "industry") involvement, there were few requirements that could be dumped without significant impact on worker safety, and ultimately the assessment rates of employers. Since optics are sadly of prime importance for governments of almost all political stripes (not a positive reflection on the electorate overall, is it?), hundreds of regulations were removed, although the same obligations were simply transferred into much less visible, but equally obligatory guidelines or policy, such that those with little familiarity with how the system actually works (e.g. many employers) were pleased that their political advocates had reduced the burden the raving socialist hordes had place upon them that fettered initiative, economic activity and were a general scourge on society....