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The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has launched a call for evidence asking business groups, and other stakeholders to submit their views on the social and employment review and how it affects the UK.

The call for evidence is being led by BIS, jointly with the Department for Work and Pensions, the Health and Safety Executive and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It will consider areas such as equal treatment, employment rules, social protection and health and safety at work.

This call for evidence is part of a 2 year government review of the balance of competences between the UK and EU which was announced by the Foreign Secretary in July 2012.

The Balance of Competences Review will provide an informed and objective analysis of what EU membership means for the UK and our national interest. It is looking at the scope of the EU’s competences (the power to act in a particular area) as they affect the UK, as well as how they are used.

The call for evidence began on 29 October 2013 and will run to 17 January 2014.

Notes to editors

1. The calls for evidence can be found at the Balance of Competences Review

2. The Foreign Secretary launched the Balance of Competences Review in Parliament on 12 July 2012, taking forward the Coalition commitment to examine the balance of competences between the UK and the European Union. The review will produce a series of reports on specific areas of EU competence, spread over 4 semesters between autumn 2012 and autumn 2014 and will provide an analysis of what the UK’s membership of the EU means for the UK national interest. It will not be tasked with producing specific recommendations and will not prejudge future policy or look at alternative models for Britain’s overall relationship with the EU. Full details of the programme as a whole can be found on the GOV.UK website.

3. The government’s economic policy objective is to achieve ‘strong, sustainable and balanced growth that is more evenly shared across the country and between industries’. It set 4 ambitions in the ‘Plan for Growth’, published at Budget 2011:

• to create the most competitive tax system in the G20
• to make the UK the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business
• to encourage investment and exports as a route to a more balanced economy
• to create a more educated workforce that is the most flexible in Europe

Work is underway across government to achieve these ambitions, including progress on more than 250 measures as part of the Growth Review. Developing an Industrial Strategy gives new impetus to this work by providing businesses, investors and the public with more clarity about the long-term direction in which the government wants the economy to travel.