Government to reduce burdens on business

Government budget proposals

• will improve and reform the Enterprise Management Incentive scheme (EMI), which helps SMEs recruit and retain talent, by providing additional support to help start-ups access the scheme; by consulting on amending restrictions that currently prevent the scheme being used by academics employed by start-ups, and by more than doubling the individual grant limit to £250,000, subject to State aid approval;
• will consult on simplifying the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) energy efficiency scheme to reduce administrative burdens on business.  Should very significant administrative savings not be deliverable, the Government will bring forward proposals in autumn 2012 to replace CRC revenues with an alternative environmental tax, and will engage with business before then to identify potential options;
• will scrap or improve 84 per cent of health and safety regulation, including legislating in 2012 so that ‘strict liability’ provisions in health and safety law will no longer hold employers to be in breach of their duties when they have done everything that is reasonably practicable and foreseeable to protect their employees;
• will rationalise environmental regulation to reduce costs to business by at least £1 billion over five years without reducing environmental protections, including introducing new contaminated land guidance in April 2012, which will save business £140 million per year;
• will launch sector-based reviews of regulation from April 2012 to ensure regulation is enforced at the lowest possible cost to business, starting with chemicals manufacturing, volunteer events and small businesses in food manufacturing; and
• has examined around 1,500 regulations through the Red Tape Challenge, over half of which will be scrapped or improved. The Government has also achieved a cumulative net reduction of regulation since January 2011 worth £3.3 billion to business, with 19 deregulatory measures taking effect in the first half of 2012.