Nothing but Job-Killing Regulations and Red Tape!

According to the Sun, George Osborne has said that he wants to slash what are technically referred to as "job killing regulations" and summarises views which he received at last year's Tory conference

"What a lot of the businesses in the audience said was, 'You are just making it too difficult to employ people. There is too much red tape, there are too many obstacles, you are asking us to take too many risks'. We have listened to those businesses."

Amongst other things, this will include increasing the qualification time before you can bring a claim for unfair dismissal from 1 year to 2 years. Oddly, reversing his own VAT increase doesn't get a mention...

Coincidentally enough, a few days ago I was involved in a discussion on Twitter over "red tape" in the UK, and thought it would be a good idea to see how the UK ranks overall.

I stumbled upon a Wikipedia article called the "Ease of Doing Business Index". This is an annual survey done by the World Bank that ranks every country in order of how easy it is to, well, do business there. As of 2011, the UK ranks #4.

As PPUKScuzz said "If we're already 4th (abo[ve] the US/Japan/Germany) red tape is obviously not the biggest issue". However, as with many studies, it does have its share of criticisms.

Thankfully, there are alternative rankings.  These includes one made by the Heritage Foundation and Wall St Journal called the "Index of Economic Freedom", in which we rank #16; the Fraser Institute creates one known as the "Economic Freedom of the World" in which we rank #8; while the World Economic Forum publishes two different ones: the "Global Competitiveness Report", in which we rank #10; and "Global Enabling Trade Report", which ranked us as #17 in 2010. *

So we have 5 different studies. Some from right-wing think-tanks, others from international bodies. An average of these puts the UK at #11.

Given that we have such a high ranking, I doubt that anyone can seriously claim that the UK is suffering from "red tape" and "obstacles" like Osborne does...

PS. I also thought that this quote was worth highlighting

"To go on strike because you are being offered a better pension than your next-door neighbour at a time when maybe your next-door neighbour is facing losing their job is something that is very difficult to justify."

In other words, "That's a nice job you have there. It'd be a shame if something happened to it".

* There are almost certainly others, but I just wanted to give an overview. Tweet