Friend has referred to the financial aspects of the need to keep bureaucracy low so that the costs of licensing are low and reasonable for small firms. It would be possible to promote a regime so exacting that it would be difficult for small firms to continue. They would be frozen out and that would produce a cosy club of big security firms.
Friend is entirely right.
I have often made the point, not least when I introduced a ten-minute Bill on 27 April 1999 about regulations on small firms, that, too often, they give up the unequal struggle against the regulatory leviathan. That is depressing, and it is our fault. I am grateful to him for pointing that out. The debate was opened from these Benches in characteristically robust and eloquent fashion by my hon. In particular, and like other Members to whom I shall refer in a moment, he mentioned the frankly evil practices of a great many of the cowboy wheelclampers across the country.