In its attempt to make business support simpler the government's managed to weave an ever more tangled web, says Glenn Athey.

Simplification - why does it have to be such a complicated business?

In the 2006 Budget Statement, Gordon Brown acknowledged that England's 3,000 business support schemes were far too many - and announced a plan to trim the number down to no more than 100 by the beginning of 2008. But the number of schemes is missing the main issue - what business support is for, and for whom.

The DTI has since been given the not-so-simple task of 'simplifying' business support. But the way they have gone about it is classic Whitehall - playing the numbers game, and probably missing the one chance we've had in 20 years to sharpen the government's focus and role in business support to where it's really needed and best deployed.

And simplification didn't get off to a good start - first, the name changed from 'deproliferation' to 'simplification'. Second, they didn't consult with anyone before announcing the decision (and if they had, they'd have been told the 3,000 is only the number of initiatives registered on the Business Link website - and is an underestimate). And third - there's the method of implementing simplification which will probably simply rebrand all the 3,000 or more schemes. The DTI has designed a process that involves mapping initiatives to the DTI's nine categories (or channels) of business support. However, these nine categories (or channels) are so flexible that many current programmes and initiatives will fit under these. If this happens, then the entire exercise will have been purely cosmetic, and the status quo will prevail.

Underlying this is that the government has lacked a coherent vision and rationale for business support, and there has been no agreement or effective joint working between government departments.

But there's real potential for positive change. Going forward, what could we do to improve business support?

Set out a clear role and priorities for government in business support. Amazingly, we've never had this. Instead we've ended up with a long list of targets and a series of new initiatives, some of which don't relate to each other, or even conflict. It's time to set down some hard and fast rules about where the public sector gets involved in business support, and importantly, where it does not get involved.

Set out an agenda for the private sector in business support, and for better public-private collaboration. Much business support is provided by the market. Government and the private sector need to work better together. Sometimes the government should question itself - asking if its business support provision is sufficiently better than the private sector, or is genuinely providing where the private sector will not.

The needs of businesses themselves should inform the government's role. The client group seems to have little influence on the scope and nature of business support. This should change.

We must realise that the government's role is as a niche player in business support. For many years, government involvement has been creeping into providing 'universal' services, or the same basic services segmented for a plethora of client groups. To my mind, the Government should confine its role to: enterprise promotion generally, and more intensively amongst young people and deprived communities; enterprise support in deprived areas where there isn't much private sector advice or support, or where peers and friends don't know as much about running businesses; supporting business activities that are new, risky, or untried, but have the promise of high economic benefits and impacts; and to definite gaps in the market - such as finance for businesses taking risks with new technology and innovation.

Build a community of practice. The lessons seem to have been missed or forgotten from initiatives such as the Phoenix Fund with its many innovative projects and methods of implementing business support. In England, I can see much reinvention of the pioneering approaches in Scottish and Welsh development agencies. One role for central government may well be to fund and build a community of practice in economic development and regeneration. Regions and localities should be able to get information on the cutting edge of policy and practice, and not have to spend a few years reinventing it themselves.

Finally - competition is healthy, isn't it? Where did the preoccupation with duplication and proliferation come from? Most enterprises use support services in the market; they make choices within a crowded field of suppliers and services. So there's no reason to justify simplification from the point of view of 'confusion'. The public sector's portfolio of initiatives, and its relentless segmentation of the market has also become very unwieldy and messy. In sum, Government is just trying to do too much, and with too many types of businesses - and importantly, without any compelling or coherent idea of why it's doing business support.

My final conclusions are that we don't need a massively complicated mapping process to simplify business support - and we need to stop pretending that government should support every business. There is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to clearly set out the role of government, RDAs, local partners; the key priorities and guidelines for delivery; and a simpler and more straightforward business support environment. It's an opportunity that must be seized.