Sorry, I'm a bit tied up

True to form, chancellor Gordon Brown delivered a politically masterful vision when he presented his spring Budget last week. The economy hit last year's growth target, the forecasts look good, in fact everything looks perfect. But is it? Can we trust the chancellor and the Treasury any more than we can trust Blair and the security services? Brown said the government is to look at strengthening the scrutiny of regulation in construction, but this seems only to apply to new regulatory proposals.

Smaller businesses, particularly in construction, are still facing their most challenging crisis for 15 years: how can we survive under a government that has smothered us with regulation, restriction and registration? The regulatory list is quite frightening:

• Design and planning through CABE, a move that seems to be more for the benefit of egotistical architects than for clients and building users.

• CDM Regulations, which only benefit external planning supervisors who add nothing except fees.

• The emphasis on site safety is more about demonising employers than improving standards.

• Company governance and financial reporting are again more about demonising directors than improving management.

• Employment law is all about demonising employers and avoiding employee responsibility.

• Waste management has more to do with raising taxes than sustainability.

• Pre-tender qualification is still a free-for-all despite ConstructionLine, and increasingly used by public sector clients and consultants to poach key staff for the lowest priced contractor.

• The exclusion of small and medium-sized enterprises from government and public sector contracts through the restrictive drafting of contracts and tender prequalification. Sir Peter Gershon's reforms will undoubtedly reinforce this, to the detriment of many constructors. These SMEs employ our scattered but sustainable nationwide labour force and, crucially, train new recruits. The practical knowledge base to train skilled craftsmen effectively only exists in the threatened SMEs and sole traders. Their continued success is vital.

• Construction Industry Scheme: The Inland Revenue doesn't like SMEs, and positively hates the self-employed. It's so much more expensive to collect tax from thousands of smaller companies and self-employed people than it is from massive companies through PAYE. So to make life as difficult as possible for SMEs, subcontractors and any company that employs them, the revenue introduced the CIS. It is currently trying to make it even more onerous, ready to roll it out to all industry and commerce. It should be scrapped completely, and a Right-to-be-Self-Employed Bill introduced with tax collected through self-assessment in the same way as VAT.

• The Construction Skills Certification Scheme is a restrictive registration system established by the unions, the major contractors and the CITB to jointly regulate the industry's direct labour force. It does have one good point – the mandatory basic safety training for all cardholders. The unions, however want CSCS closed shops on government contracts and for the Home Office to use it as an identity card system for immigrants.

In other countries when unions and big business have got together with government-approved labour regulations, serious corruption has developed. This has been followed by the involvement of organised crime as labour masters, like the ones running the illegal immigrant gangs in the UK. Do we really want this in the UK?

But there's one regulation we need, and we need government to introduce it quickly. That is positive discrimination towards SMEs in the awarding of government contracts to protect and encourage the 80% of the industry that is still employing and training our future labour force.

Most regulations could be scrapped or modified without detriment to government or the public