Employment relations minister Ed Davey has reinforced the government’s commitment to remove barriers to job creation.

“We want to take away all barriers perceived or real,” Davey told a recent breakfast event organised by Headstart Employment held at Epsom Downs Racecourse.

Davey acknowledged employers’ fears that employing staff was “all so tricky and difficult”. However, referring to the Employer’s Charter launched in January, he emphasised that legislation wasn’t biased towards employees. 

Employers had rights too, said Davey, and indeed the grain of existing legislation was “if they behaved reasonably” they shouldn’t have anything to fear.

Davey said the government was pressing ahead with changes that would give employers the confidence to recruit. This included reducing the qualifying period for taking an unfair dismissal case to an Employment Tribunal. Employment Tribunals were “the biggest single headache” mentioned by every single business organisation, said Davey.

Davey referred to the ongoing review of all employment and employment-related legislation that is currently going on across Whitehall. And he vowed that in future, rather than introduce new regulation, the government intended to deregulate or to re-regulate.

For more from Davey, see the latest issue of Recruiter, out Wednesday.