It’s almost six months since Ken Clarke and I launched the Conservative Party’s plans to cut red tape and quangos, so what was the reaction? Did we get cheers, or raspberries?

This week the Institute of Directors estimated that the costs of Government regulation is more than £80 billion a year, about 5.7% of the UK’s GDP. And that’s just the burden on businesses – you’d have to add the impact on the public sector and charities on top. No wonder that 58% of companies believe that regulation is holding back their business success.

Given these figures, it’s hardly surprising that the reactions to our policy proposals have been overwhelmingly positive. Everyone is so fed up with red tape, and so desperate for any sign that politicians are planning to fix the problem, that they’re ecstatic with any policies which seem credible.

But there’s been a fair amount of cynicism too. Successive Governments, both Labour and Conservative, have promised to sort the problem out before and, with some honourable but temporary exceptions during the Thatcher years, no-one has managed to turn things around successfully.

So even though businesses like what they’re hearing, they’re understandably cautious about believing that this time might be different. And quite right too! In the end, they will only be convinced if we make real, visible progress in reducing the weight of the huge regulatory millstone which Labour has hung around our collective necks.

That’s why yesterday I launched a Parliamentary Early Day Motion setting out the Conservatives’ commitment to Regulatory Budgets, which will encourage better regulation and help to minimise the burden on UK’s businesses during the UK’s recovery from recession. It’s a definite start and shows our strong commitment to a better regulation agenda.

Of course it won’t be until the Conservatives are in Government that we’ll be able to implement the policy, but I hope businesses will be reassured nonetheless. The clock’s ticking for Gordon and his Labour Government; with any luck businesses won’t have to wait too long for our plans to become reality.

Britain employs more agency workers than any other European country and so it will be hit hardest by the Directive. In its current form, the Directive will cost business some £40 billion over the next 10 years and wipe out tens of thousands of jobs.  Rushing this through may keep the unions happy, but in the current recession we need to be creating jobs not destroying them.

This is not the only area in which this government has hugely increased employment regulation.  Some 25 Acts of Parliament and 250 secondary laws dealing with employment have been passed.  These form a major element of the £76 billion of regulatory costs imposed on business since 1998.

The Conservatives aim to reduce the burden of red tape which stifles employers – particularly small businesses.   We need to cut out the gold plating of European directives, repatriate employment law from Brussels to the UK, and introduce more flexibility into the workplace so that we can get more employees into work and so that employers are not deterred from creating the jobs necessary to move the economy forward.

It is now illegal to place a For Sale sign in front of your own home without first having this expensive paperwork in place.

Weary sellers have little choice but to sigh at yet another piece of burdensome bureaucracy, suffer the delay and stump up the cash. And the fact that the buyer’s solicitor will rarely accept the HIP Search carried out by the seller is just another cost which piles up on both sides during the expensive and stressful business of moving home.

Along with the growing cost of HIPs, there is mounting evidence that home buying and selling is actually slowing up – in part because of a growing backlog for local authority Searches actually caused by the HIP itself. The problem being that each Search is now duplicated; first by the person selling their home in order to legally comply with the HIP law, and then again by the solicitor acting on behalf of the person buying the property. All of which frequently results in slower transactions.

During the past couple of years I’ve faced four different Housing Ministers across the Despatch Box and have presented each with compelling evidence demonstrating not only that HIPs aren’t working, but that they are actively causing harm to an already embattled housing market.

The fact that, despite all the damning evidence, Ministers lack the competence to scrap HIPs demonstrates that this tired old government has lost the capacity to make rational decisions based on hard evidence.

Most will grin and bear a few hundred pounds of additional cost and a bit more pointless red-tape. After all, we have become very accustomed to the suffocating dead-weight of yet more bureaucracy after twelve years of this government . But what should concern us all is not the individual issue of Home Information Packs – we’ve already pledged to scrap them (maintaining only the Energy Performance Certificate) – but that even when faced with proof that a policy has gone so badly wrong, Labour Ministers refuse to act. They appear paralysed by the evidence, unable or incapable of taking the most basic steps to help people navigate the toughest economic times that this country has seen in decades.

The great HIPs debacle has in many ways become shorthand for a government that has run out of ideas and should now be run out of office.

The aim was simple. To understand how businesses are coping with the recession, to assess what the government is doing to promote UK business and whether it is enough, and to come up with ideas to tackle the recession and ensure the future viability of UK business.

A lot of what we heard about the Government and the recession was rather depressing. Despite the government announcing scheme after scheme, there’s been a widespread failure to deliver enough help and businesses are getting frustrated with the empty promises.

There’s also major annoyance at the amount of unnecessary red tape that Whitehall has rolled out and the failure to train people with enough relevant skills for the business world. Both of these problems, in the long term, are making it more and more difficult for businesses to operate in the UK.

Thankfully, we’re already looking at ideas to solve many of these problems. For instance, I’m currently developing the party’s approach to regulation and how we can shift the culture of ‘more is better’ to ‘quality not quantity’. It was reassuring to hear that so many businesses agree we’re on the right track.

That’s not to say that we’ve got all the answers. The day was tremendously helpful in raising new areas we could look at and in suggesting solutions to the problems too. I suppose the only question that remains unanswered from the day is why the government aren’t listening too. Rather than announcing new schemes which fail to deliver, they should stop and listen to the experts. It would do our economy and UK Ltd the world of good!

I then dropped the girls off at their dance and drama class. Unfortunately not all children are this lucky.  After this weeks report into children’s services by Lord Laming, it just confirms what we already knew – we are failing a lot of our young people. This is right across the board, from vulnerable children with their families to children in the care system and to young people from caring homes just trying to find their way through this bureaucratic world we now live in.

Targets and red tape have a lot to answer for in recent years.  Social workers have been tied to their desks for too long, they need to be freed up to get out there amongst the families who need their help. We need to remove the boundaries.

Why is it in the UK that only 6 out of every 100 children in care go into further education? What’s different in Holland where 6 out of every 10 children in care go on to further education?

These are big questions that need solutions.  Any system is only as good as the people within it, but if we don’t trust those people to make the right decisions how do we expect it to work? There are in my view too many government departments working independently, not only do we need a more joined up approach within these, but we also need to work with the voluntary sector.

One of the best schemes I’ve ever seen is the Mentoring Project at Bolton Lads & Girls Club. This is a scheme set up for vulnerable and disadvantaged young people aged between 8 -21. The project is currently working with 202 young people with a further 179 on the waiting list.

The main emphasis of the mentoring role is to develop a solid partnership with the young person and offer much needed advice, support, guidance and help them achieve their goals. Check out how the voluntary sector works at its best: www.blgc.co.uk

Crucially we need to start seeing next generation broadband not as a way just to do the same things as we are currently doing on the internet faster (as convenient as that would be) but as a way or providing new infrastructure for next generation businesses. The UK is well placed to take advantage of faster broadband speeds as our film, television, music and video games industries, amongst others, are world leaders. But they don’t as yet have the right tools to ensure they will continue to compete in the new digital world.

Crucially we’re not talking about massive public sector investment in this new network. The Government can act quickly and create the right investment conditions that will ensure the private sector delivers it. They should start with deregulation. We should not rely solely on BT – if they are not willing to lay a fibre network, other operators should be allowed the opportunity to do so.

The talent, energy, expertise and enthusiasm of our creative sector is waiting to take off. The question is whether we have a government with the vision to allow it to do so.