5 years ago… Labour accused of £10bn regulatory costs

20.01.2000: The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has attacked the Labour government for costing UK firms £10bn in regulatory burdens over its first term.

The BCC has launched a campaign to cut red tape to coincide with the House of Commons debate on small firms taking place today.

The web-based campaign aims to identify the growing number of regulations the BCC claims are costing companies time and resources in compliance. It will also offer advice and information to help these companies find a way to limit these costs.

20.01.2005: The situation five years on has only got worse, according to the BCC. It's last report in February 2004 claims the regulatory costs have risen from £10bn in 1997 to £30bn in 2004.

Small businesses in particular are prone to getting caught up in the masses of red tape and the BCC aimed to tackle this as part of a three-year collaboration with Microsoft it launched last year.

Undoubtedly one of the ongoing biggest regulation headaches for businesses, which is also having a major impact on corporate and public sector IT departments is the raft of accounting and compliance regulation that has been introduced.

Among these are Basel II, International Accounting Standards, Sarbanes-Oxley and the Freedom of Information Act.

The headache is unlikely to go away anytime soon with IT directors and CIOs indicating in our end of year CIO Agenda survey that it will continue to swallow up valuable time and resources.