David Frost
David Frost is Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce and will be debating the future of employment regulation against the TUC’s Brendan Barber at a lunchtime event on July 15. To help broaden the debate (and wind up our readers a bit) we asked him to set out his case in a guest post for us. You can read a TUC response here, or come to the debate itself by registering online at isderegulationdead.org.uk.
The title and topic for the BCC debate with the TUC – ‘Is deregulation dead?’ – would have received a very different answer at the beginning of 2010. Whilst deregulation was never ‘dead’ during the Labour Government’s 13 years, it was certainly sleeping. Our Burdens Barometer, which uses the Government’s own figures, shows that since 1998, business has been faced with £88.8bn of costs related to new regulation. The language during this period was more about better regulation than less regulation. The new Coalition Government has made it clear in their first 100 days that deregulation is very much alive and well, and will be a central theme of the new administration’s policies.
