Keir Starmer vows to cut costs for business and ‘unleash’ private sector
Sir Keir Starmer has vowed to cut costs for businesses and “unleash the power of the private sector” in a bid to deliver economic growth.
Writing for City PM the Prime Minister described it as “an outrage” that the government “does not know how much it costs business to comply with the regulations imposed on them”.
In an exclusive article, he announced that his government will be the first “to baseline these costs” – and then to cut them – after pledging last week that compliance expenses would be reduced by 25 per cent by the end of this Parliament.
It comes after Sir Keir also announced last week he wanted to reform the civil service and create a more “agile” state – including via digital efficiencies and artificial intelligence (AI).
Now he stressed that this is only “half of the equation” and that regulations must be reviewed in order to secure a growing economy.
He highlighted the entrepreneurs working “day and night”, the family firms passing “know-how across the generations”, and iconic British companies employing “thousands of people” – as well as investors providing “the capital and expertise that fuels growth”.
The state, he said, “should be enabling these businesses, making it easier for them to do what they do best”.
Cutting regulation costs
And Starmer criticised the layers of “regulation upon regulation on companies and investors, increasing complexity and cost”, adding that Britain is a “harder place to do business than it was a decade ago”.
He promised regulators were “committing to sandboxes that encourage innovation”, rather than making it harder to set up a new business.
And the Prime Minister insisted: “My government is taking on that challenge to bring back the animal spirits of the private sector, and to make Britain the best place in the world to start and build a business.”
It came as Chancellor Rachel Reeves summoned regulators to Downing Street where she told them there was “too much bureaucracy” which is making it “too slow to get things done” – and demanded a reduction in duplication across watchdogs’ work.
And Starmer wrote in City PM that the government would kick off a “short, sharp process” to identify other regulators to be “cut or merged to simplify our system and reduce duplication”.
Business-facing regulators, he said, have been told to focus more on growth and investment, while ministers are “streamlining” their duties.
Watchdogs will be held accountable, the Prime Minister added, with “clear KPIs, timelines and processes” – and consequences for failure.