ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now how many times have you heard politicians promise to cut red tape?  Tony Blair said he’d do it, Gordon Brown too and now the Conservatives say they can save British business £10 billion by getting rid of what they call unnecessary regulations.  Matt Hancock is the Conservative Minister of State for Business and he joins me now, a very good morning to you Mr Hancock.  First a quick reflection on what Caroline Flint was saying just there, I mean you can’t disagree with that, companies, individuals should pay their fair share of tax.

MATT HANCOCK:  Absolutely, I totally support the principle that taxes should be low but they must be paid and over this parliament we have increased the tax take that was previously going to in tax avoidance by five billion and we’ve pledged … just let me finish my answer, we’ve pledged to do the same …   

DM: But you have criticised Labour for being anti-business, they can’t be anti-business, you agree with them.  

MATT HANCOCK:  The anti-business sentiment from the Labour party is putting off businesses large and small who are the job creators of this nation, now of course they have to pay their fair share of tax, in fact we are the people who’ve done that.  Under the Labour government when Caroline was in the Cabinet, they were the friends of tax avoiders and we have taken a huge amount of action in the past five years.  For instance, this Labour policy on needing transparency over who really owns businesses ...

DM: But you said you’d do that ages ago.  

MATT HANCOCK:  Yes, and I’m putting it through the House of Commons, it’s in my Bill.  So this agenda is being driven by the Conservatives and I think you just saw the utter confusion on the other side, the confusion over this predators versus producers distinction which is deeply misleading and damaging but also just on the very narrow issue of this energy price freeze.  Caroline Flint is the Shadow Energy spokesman, she today talked about a price freeze that would freeze prices much higher than before so it’s just … you pull one little brick out of the Jenga puzzle and the whole Labour policy proposition all comes tumbling down.    

DM: Well whether they are predators or producers, you want to cut red tape for them and you say you already have but as I said in my introduction there, in the 2005 budget Gordon Brown ‘I will remove unnecessary barriers to profitable enterprises by cutting red tape’.  In 2008, Alistair Darling, ‘A package to cut red tape, radical new proposals to slash red tape.’  George Osborne, 2011, ‘Simplifying taxes and removing red tape.’  Easy to say, doesn’t really happen.  

MATT HANCOCK:  Well the big difference between all those is that one set of promises were words and the other is action so over this parliament we have reduced the burden of domestic regulation, it’s the first parliament in modern history when that’s happened.  Because I totally understand where …

DM: There will be many people who will be saying, yeah, yeah.  

MATT HANCOCK:  They were promised this for years and years so when we came in in 2010 we put in place an independent inspectorate, it’s called the Regulatory Policy Committee, very formal sounding, and what they do is they measure the burden on business of things we’re bringing in and regulations that we’re removing and over this parliament we have reduced the burden in total by ten billion and we’re committing to reduce the burden of domestic regulation by ten billion over the next parliament too.   
DM: So ten billion done, ten billion to go but the National Audit Office, you’ll be aware of, says since 2005 there have been 19 independent reviews on better regulation with quote/unquote ‘no discernible difference’.   

MATT HANCOCK:  Well I don’t know what the date was of that National Audit Office review.   

DM: Well they have done it since 2005 and I’m not sure exactly when they reported.  

MATT HANCOCK:  Well I certainly accept that there was a big rise in regulation from 2005 to 2010 but I was trying to stop it at the time and now we have reversed this.  Day in and day out we are removing burdens on business, keeping in place crucial protections and crucial support for the environment, in all sorts of areas but making it less burdensome and crucially allowing businesses to get on with doing their job, building their businesses, creating jobs, creating prosperity which is what we all want to see.  I mean one of the reasons I came into politics was to make it easier for businesses to create jobs.   

DM: But it’s whether you are conjuring these figures out of the air.  This is from your own press release which was pressed into my hands earlier this morning from the Conservatives with your lovely tree on it, Conservatives headline ‘Will cut £10 billion’ as you’ve told us, ‘of red tape to help businesses grow and create jobs’ and that you have already cut that £10 billion as you’ve also said.  Then the question is where and how have you done it, you have handily given us that list but it is things like abolishing licences for live entertainment £1.4 million saved, changing EU rules that defined jam as being two-thirds sugar content, unspecified how much you saved, I doubt that that got anywhere close to the 10 billion …

MATT HANCOCK:  That’s right.  

DM: And then stopping the requirement for people to report grey squirrels in their gardens, that’s saved you ten billion quid has it?

MATT HANCOCK:  Well you don’t get ten billion from one individual regulation….

DM: From squirrels.  

MATT HANCOCK:  … whether it’s about squirrels or anything else.  I’ll tell you, you deal with the burdens on business of regulation by going across the piece, huge numbers, a huge amount of work and huge numbers of areas but the reason we have been able to do this in the last parliament is that every time…

DM: But where are the hundreds of billions you are alleged to have saved?  

MATT HANCOCK:  Let me finish what I was saying, let me give you a couple of examples, because we’ve done it by saying if you want to bring in a new rule you have to reduce twice the burden in order to have the space to do that.  So let me give you an example of where it’s been really big.  

DM: Please.  

MATT HANCOCK:  Health and safety rules used to be done by the letter of the law, you ended up with a lot of complications and instead we’ve said there is a reasonableness test.  If you behave reasonably in business and you are not negligent, then you won’t be caught by Health and Safety.  That changes a culture …  

DM: So this is one of the changes you have brought in.  How much have you saved?  How much have you saved for business?

MATT HANCOCK: Absolutely.  Tens of millions, I haven’t got the number in my head.  

DM: Tens of millions but you have got ten billion to get, Minister, ten billion and you have given me catching grey squirrels in your back garden and jam definitions.  

MATT HANCOCK: There are big heavyweight changes and then there are also a lot that are amusing and small and we use them to demonstrate the change. Let me give you another example, there used to be age restrictions on the sale of chocolate liqueurs, I think that’s ridiculous, you’re laughing and so it captures… It takes huge numbers of these changes which is why the one in/two out rule means that right across Whitehall there are people looking for ways to reduce the burden of regulation on business because it’s necessary to make changes in hundreds of areas.  If anything you are proving the point by pointing to all the, there are hundreds and hundreds of small measures like that.

DM: Well with the best will in the world, we’ve got to about ten million, not ten billion.  

MATT HANCOCK: No, the health and safety ones are much bigger than that.  

DM: This is all that you’ve quoted in this press release, this is the last one here, saving £2.5 million each year through TV licences.  

MATT HANCOCK: Yes, it is absolutely a constant effort to make sure that where there are protections, then they are done in a way that is least burdensome to business, crucially so that businesses – especially small businesses who are unduly hit by these problems – can get out there, they can grow their businesses, they can create jobs, they can create prosperity ultimately and that’s what we want them to be doing.  

DM: Okay, well thank goodness we don’t now have to report those pesky squirrels anymore.  Thank you very much – I didn’t know you had to in the first place – Matt Hancock, thank you very much indeed.