David Warr, chairman of the small business group, asks in the latest edition of Chamber On-line, the organisation’s internet newsletter: ‘How can a law first drafted in the 1970s still strictly be relevant today?’ He says business people will tell you that ‘the law is all about the state telling business who and how many people they can or can’t employ’.
This is essentially true, in that the law was designed to license businesses to fill a set number of posts and also to specify how much space an undertaking could occupy.