Beecroft report on employment law
This official response from Vince Cable to the Beecroft report which has caught all the headlines because it feels that significant growth could be achieved by reforming employment law to make it easier amongst other things to dismiss staff brings to the fore the controversy around stimulating economic growth.
Vince says:
“Mr Beecroft came and spoke to officials in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills last year whilst compiling his report. Consequently, the vast majority of proposals in Mr Beecroft’s final report reflect ongoing work by the Department.
“In response to widespread concerns from small businesses we are simplifying employment tribunals with further measures in the planned Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill. And across Government we have announced a number of measures for CRB checks, work permits and pensions auto-enrolment to help ease the burdens on business.
“This has all happened independently from Mr Beecroft’s recommendations and were part of the Government’s existing programme of reform and agenda for growth.
“One of Mr Beecroft’s recommendations was a suggestion to bring in no-fault dismissal. In my daily conversations with businesses, this has very rarely been raised with me as a barrier to growth.
Mr Beecroft suggested that is all his reforms were implemented a significant surge in economic growth could be achieved. He is angry that Government has not accepted them all and diminished the prospects in his view of economic growth.
This is all very interesting. I was at a meeting on Tuesday where a number of Councillors were intrigued to learn in more detail, from Defra, what the logic underpinning the targets set by the first five regional growth networks had been.They went on to ask how they would be monitored and how the learning would be disseminated.
We learned that a complex and economist moderated approach was being put in place to answer all the questions about displacement, deadweight, strategic added value, the credibility of logic models, the counterfacutal etc, etc. All of which after nearly 30 years in economic development led me to wonder whether economic development should be more of an art than a science. Can we really measure these things meaningfully? and if you cant measure something should you do it?