Ross Clark Ross Clark

Enough, says Blair — but is anyone listening?

Given that the government’s lust for setting targets has done so much to increase bureaucracy in public services

issue 09 December 2006

Given that the government’s lust for setting targets has done so much to increase bureaucracy in public services

Given that the government’s lust for setting targets has done so much to increase bureaucracy in public services, one could be forgiven for a little scepticism regarding the Prime Minister’s latest target: to reduce red tape by 25 per cent. Presumably a new quango will be set up to measure the exact length of red tape which binds the country, so that Blair will be able to pronounce victory once precisely a quarter of it has been chopped off.

I don’t hold out a great deal of hope that this latest initiative will achieve anything. We’ve heard it all before. It was six years — or about 20,000 new regulations — ago that Blair first set up the Better Regulation Task Force, citing the example of 120 Acts of Parliament which are concerned with fire safety.

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