Richard MacDonald’s Task Force on Farming Regulation has been challenged to find ways of reducing the bureaucratic burdens that English farmers and food producers face – and, in spite of regulations stating we can only burn hedge clippings, get the red tape ready because that’s the bonfire we’ve been waiting for throughout the last decade.

But just in case anybody has any doubts about the task facing him, I came across some interesting statistics published recently by the Law Commission. Yes, I understand about liars and damn liars and I know that I shouldn’t harp on about the past – but I’m sure I cannot be alone in not appreciating that some 3,000 new offences got on to the statute books since 1997 - around half of which relate to regulatory practices and currently around one in ten prosecutions in the magistrates courts relate to breaches of regulation.

Thousands more pieces of secondary legislation to do with red tape - which can also create new offences - have also been drawn up.

And, according to our friends at the Commission, in 2008 the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs created more than 100 criminal offences in a single Act aimed at reducing the spread of BSE, the commission said. Personally, I would have thought that was a bit behind the power curve in a chronological sense Not to be outdone, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills introduced 74 offences by way of regulation, order, or in schedules to pieces of primary legislation in the same year.

As I may have mentioned before, when you create that many public sector jobs, you have to find something for them to do – creating regulations must, presumeably, be considered gainful employment. But its worse than that, under the last lot, Government agencies – and goodness knows there were plenty of them set up – were able to introduce their own regulations pretty much willy nilly and the kind of stealth culture which existed meant the use of statutory instrument – which allows additional law to be passed by a committee without recourse to Parliament - was a real growth industry.

Now it may be all very well to ban the sale of fags and fireworks to the irresponsible youth of today – but under that system painting your front door red could have become a major public order offence.

And then of course, there’s the health and safety regulations where gardeners working more than a foot or so above ground level have to be roped on and where ladder awareness courses are in place for just about everybody and where policemen have to do a risk assessment before stopping a punch up. It wasn’t supposed to be madness, it was supposed to improve safety in the workplace and in other areas - and it did, dramatically.

But it becomes proscriptive when the definitions are subjective – and, of course, when you let a few thousand of Britain’s best bureaucrats loose on it.

I understand full well that we are far less able to look after ourselves, take decisions or understand risks than our forefathers were - and thank goodness we had a nanny state to do that – but according to newspaper reports, the last government created new crimes at the rate of about one a day (if you exclude weekends) and also introduced some 40,000 statutory instruments during its period in office.

Clearly there is a role for health and safety and, clearly, some areas of food and farming have to have rules and regulations but surely there is also a role for common sense and balance?

That lot is going to take some unraveling.

Lord Young has got the job of drawing back the dreaded curtain of “Elfin Safety” behind which so much has been hidden in recent times. Richard MacDonald – whose remit also includes looking at on-farm health and safety regulation – has clearly identified the problem that when you try to eliminate risk by regulation it has to be all-encompassing and that’s where it becomes unworkable.

He is due to report next spring and he has asked the industry to provide examples of regulations that are unnecessary and could be removed without lowering standards for business, the public or the environment; regulations that have had additional and unnecessary measures added to them; and regulations that are overly complex or disproportionate in the way that they are implemented or enforced.

Well here’s to a brave new tomorrow, of course its going to be difficult – and complicated by European regulations – but at last, at long last, somebody has listened and change is in the wind. What can we say except good luck Richard!

Paul Millard Editor