Red Tape Challenge: 160 retail rules to be scrapped or reformed

Regulations affecting retailers which are unnecessarily burdensome, overly bureaucratic or completely redundant are to be reformed or completely scrapped, the government has announced.

Unveiling the first results from the Red Tape Challenge, which allows the public to comment on pointless rules, ministers said 160 regulations will be dealt with. They include proposals to:

• replace or simplify more than 12 pieces of overlapping, costly and confusing consumer rights law, with a single new piece of legislation;
• remove a number of burdens specifically identified by retailers including consolidating and simplifying the procedures for age verification or identification for the selling of age-restricted goods; simplify the ineffective and burdensome poisons licensing system for low risk products such as fly spray and toilet cleaner; remove the requirement on retailers to notify TV Licensing about TV sales; and removing and simplifying a range of rules on transport products such as tyres and catalytic converters;
• promote greater personal freedom and responsibility by getting rid of symbolic cases of heavy handed intervention, such as requiring a shop selling liqueur chocolates to have an alcohol licence, and by lowering the age for buying harmless Christmas crackers; and
• prevent business confusion, and cutting down the dead weight of the statute book, by removing redundant legislation, such as the antiquated Trading with the Enemy Act and its 98 linked regulations and rules around the safety of pencils, prams and hood cords where consumers are already protected by other legislation.

Business secretary Vince Cable said: "We have to roll back the number of rules and regulations that our businesses have to deal with if we are to create the right conditions for sustainable economic growth. We have heard these promises by successive governments before but these first proposals from the Red Tape Challenge show that we’re serious about doing that and we are making real progress."

Enterprise minister Mark Prisk added: "We've listened to what people have said about the confusing and overlapping rules with the aim to get rid of the ones we don't need and making the ones we do simpler to understand and put into practice. At the same time though we are preserving good regulation, such as the hallmarking regime, for which there was strong support."