‘Red tape’ generally refers to excessive bureaucracy: needless regulation and rigid conformity to rules that prevent or hinder action or decision-making.
It is a phrase usually applied to governments, but may also afflict large organisations, corporations or businesses.
Excessive and needless red tape is intrinsically inefficient, as well as frustrating and economically costly.
The government has come to power with a commitment to cut red tape in the way it conducts the business of the state.
A small start in the battle with red tape in Malta has been made by addressing an easy target: the abolition of three dozen archaic laws (out of more than 500) that are still on Malta’s 200-year-old statute books.
The spring cleaning exercise of the statute books also identified 118 legal notices that are outdated and should be removed and nine laws that should be consolidated.
The government is expected to put forward legislation to repeal the outdated laws or, more importantly, have fallen foul of EU rules since Malta’s accession.
The removal of these laws and regulations was announced at an occasion dubbed ‘Repeals Day’’.
But it would be wrong for the government to suppose that its commitment to cut red tape has been met. This has been a necessary start, but constitutes the easy bit – taking low-hanging fruit lying within easy reach.
The hard grind is yet to come, for this involves the Maltese civil service and its public agencies which lie at the very core of the way bureaucracy operates.
As admirers of the brilliant television series Yes Minister will recall, there is nothing most bureaucrats feel happier doing than sheltering behind the comfort of rules and regulations, often to the detriment of the efficiency, decisiveness and action which should be their raison d’etre. Anecdotal stories of red tape and bureaucratic stalling are legion. These include the need to collect and fill too many forms to gain bureaucratic approval.
It includes foot-dragging that forces civil servants to follow prescribed procedures to the letter; having multiple people or committees approving a decision or various low-level rules that make the conduct of affairs, especially business, slower, more difficult, or both; reporting, inspection and enforcement practices and procedures are especially prone.
Malta’s situation has improved dramatically over the past decade or so. But clearly more remains to be done.
Cutting red tape – the reduction of bureaucratic obstacles to action – is a never-ending battle. It is a barrier to businesses, particularly small businesses, where red tape has been described as the silent killer of jobs.
It is a hidden tax on businesses which is felt most acutely by small concerns.
However, cutting red tape is easier said than done. It requires not only practical initiatives (for example, the introduction of the one-for-one rule, where for every new regulation introduced, another regulation must be removed), but more challengingly a culture change among civil servants who have to administer regulations.
It is a difficult balance to strike between, on one hand, reducing the cost of regulation and, on the other, the legitimate health and safety objectives and financial controls necessary to the efficient running of the state.
But this must be the overarching objective to which government is committed. An annual Repeals Day is needed on which government should be required to make an annual progress report to Parliament.