British Prime Minister David Cameron promised on Sunday to cut bureaucracy to boost business at a time of deep cuts in public spending. Cameron was setting the scene for a budget on March 23 which the Conservative Liberal Democrat coalition has said will be designed to support a faltering economic recovery.
"I can announce today that we are taking on the enemies of enterprise," Cameron said in advance excerpts of a speech he will make to a party meeting in the Welsh capital Cardiff.
Cameron said he had his sights fixed on bureaucrats whose "ridiculous rules and regulations" made life impossible for small firms. He also criticised slow planning decisions and public sector managers who always plump for contracts with big businesses and shut out smaller firms.
The coalition plans to reduce government spending by around 19 percent across most departments as it seeks to virtually eliminate a record budget deficit over the next four years.
The opposition Labour Party says the government is cutting too much, too fast and risks plunging the country back into recession as the brakes go on.
Labour finance spokesman Ed Balls said on Saturday that finance minister George Osborne was in denial about the state of the economy.
"He doesn't seem to understand that without strong economic growth and with unemployment now rising again, you cannot get the deficit down," Balls said.
The economic debate has intensified after the economy shrank by 0.6 percent in the last three months of 2010, while inflation is running at four percent, double the official target.
Osborne gave his strongest signal yet on Saturday he will postpone a planned rise in fuel duty to counter soaring petrol prices.
Osborne said his budget would include new enterprise zones in deprived parts of Britain to try to attract new businesses and jobs with lower taxes.
The idea harks back to an initiative of former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher whose enterprise zones helped drive the redevelopment in the 1980s of dilapidated areas such as London's Docklands, now a flourishing financial district.
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