Where the City’s movers and shakers have their say. Today, it’s Neil Bennett, co-CEO of H/Advisors and proud chicken owner, with the Notebook pen
For the past 25 years and more, we have kept a few chickens at the bottom of the garden, like an impressive 1.3m other families in Britain. Chickens have been pecking around our village since Anglo-Saxon times, they produce wonderful fresh eggs and eat the scraps from the kitchen.
The other day though I learned to my shock and astonishment that our beloved hens are about to become the latest victims of Bureaucracy Britain.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has decreed that from October anyone who owns A SINGLE chicken, or even A SINGLE racing pigeon, must now register them or face a £5,000 fine. This was done with the minimum of consultation – no democracy and no debate. All with the paper-thin excuse of trying to control Avian Flu – a futile exercise since it is now deeply entrenched in the wild bird population.
What utter nonsense. The civil service can’t keep tabs on the thousands of people flooding into the country, let alone our chickens. And once we have filled in those forms, I know what comes next – the snooping, the spot checks from Defra, the questions about why we have eight chickens when we only registered seven. And worse, the visit that tells us because they think there may be a case of Avian Flu 20 miles away, all our dear birds have to be destroyed. This is also a jobsworth’s charter – another excuse for the civil servants to recruit thousands more of their own, to monitor the nation’s poultry.
What on earth has happened to us? Ever since Covid, we have all become victims of the grey-faced Men from the Ministry, with their clipboards and endless intrusions into our private affairs. I don’t need to remind you that this has all been done under a Conservative government, the party that is supposed to stand for personal freedoms and regularly promises ‘a bonfire of regulation’.
A leading Conservative peer summed it up when I told him: “You have got to be f***ing kidding me,” he said, despairing of his own party. The Conservatives have had 14 years to stand up for what they believe in, and have singularly failed to do so.
Steve Barclay, this month’s environment secretary (and someone who has been entirely invisible in the role), should hang his head in shame.
Let’s also be frank, this is going to get far worse under Labour, the party of the clipboard carriers and petty bureaucrats, who worship at the altar of Sir Keir, the box-ticker in chief. Brace yourself for an avalanche of rules and regulations that will destroy our personal freedoms, shackle our economy and make us all thoroughly miserable.
For the chickens, I predict a mass display of civil disobedience. I cannot believe more than a fraction of poultry fanciers are going to indulge the ministry in this orgy of intrusive nonsense. When the Man from Defra arrives, they will smuggle their birds into potting sheds, even wardrobes and cupboards (like the old lady hiding the airmen in ‘Allo ‘Allo) and pretend they were never there. Some freedoms are too important to be surrendered without a fight.
Death by red tape
If you thought the rest of this was some ramblings by an old poultry fancier, here’s proof it is part of a much wider and deeply pernicious trough we have fallen into.
An excellent report by the Centre for Policy Studies this week showed that the cost of regulation on business has grown by £48bn a year since the Tories came to power, with an additional £148bn in one off set-up costs. This is equivalent to an extra 2p in Corporation Tax.
Everywhere we are smothered by red tape, in our personal and business lives. Company leaders spend much of their day jumping through bureaucratic hoops, deprived of the simple and valuable pleasure of commerce. And, as I say above, if you think a Labour government will ever ease the burden, think again.