Next time I hear a government minister on radio or television bemoaning Britain’s poor record on productivity I request that the interviewer puts to them a simple question: can you tell us how many man-hours have been spent by large British firms in fulfilling their legal duty to provide data on their gender pay gap – something which they must do by midnight tonight?
Whatever happened to that grand talk about taking advantage of Brexit in order to deregulate, to attract investment by giving businesses the freedom to run their own affairs and by getting the government off their backs? In January last year Philip Hammond made a speech in Germany saying how Britain was prepared to ditch its European-style social democratic model. Last autumn, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove floated the idea of Britain adopting a much more liberal approach to business following Brexit, urging the Prime Minister to “embrace a vision more aligned with pro-competitive regulation”.
That is exactly what we need to do: to counter the negative effects of withdrawing from the single market by offering businesses more freedom if they choose to relocate in Britain.
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