Sir Keir Starmer was blasted last night for ditching Tory attempts to relieve the adminstrative burden on businesses – on the same day he vowed to scrap red tape.
The Labour Government quietly announced yesterday that it would not go ahead with proposals put forward by Rishi Sunak to help small firms.
The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) said the plans to simplify company reporting, announced in March, are ‘not being taken forward at this time’.
They would have raised the threshold for businesses being classed as medium-sized from 250 employees to 500, sparing many bosses of small enterprises the requirement to file detailed accounts, as well as exempting them from having to write ‘strategic reports’ reviewing the previous year.
But at the same time, the Prime Minister was telling business leaders at his International Investment Summit that he was determined to ‘rip out the bureaucracy that blocks investment’, claiming that where regulation is ‘needlessly’ holding back growth then ‘we will get rid of it’.
The Prime Minister was telling business leaders at his International Investment Summit that he was determined to ‘rip out the bureaucracy that blocks investment’
The Labour Government quietly announced yesterday that it would not go ahead with proposals put forward by Rishi Sunak (pictured)
Shadow business secretary Kevin Hollinrake (pictured) said investment and productivity will suffer
Last night shadow business secretary Kevin Hollinrake said: ‘Keir Starmer’s lack of understanding and inconsistency is quite frightening, he says one thing and does the complete opposite.
‘In the face of a looming tidal wave of red tape, Starmer’s claims of a bonfire of business regulations would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.
‘Because of Labour’s flawed, anti-business, pro-union approach, investment will drop, productivity will suffer and jobs will be lost. It must change.’
A summary of responses to the consultation on ‘simpler corporate reporting’, published yesterday, revealed that the majority of respondents agreed with the former Tory administration’s plans.
One family-run firm said: ‘Classing a business with 251 employees as a ‘large business’, and therefore bringing it into the same reporting and regulation regimes as a business with 10,000 employees, does not reflect the reality of business life or resources.’
But the reform was opposed by the umbrella body for trade unions, raising suspicions among the Tories that this may have contributed to Labour’s decision not to go ahead with it.
The TUC told the DBT consultation: ‘Companies have significant and important impacts on their stakeholders and on society, the environment and the economy more broadly.
‘These impacts are a major part of the potential benefits and disbenefits or harms that companies create. As with financial reporting, non-financial reporting is an essential part of holding companies to account.’