Martin Broughton, chairman of the CBI, the employer’s federation, had some interesting things to say to the Prime Minister at the CBI’s annual dinner last night (not that I was there you understand, I’ve just seen the speech).

Among the things that caught me eye were these. The government should focus on its core activity: reducing the budget deficit.

Broughton said that if business was responsible for cutting the deficit, it would “divest or discontinue activities that are peripheral or ‘non-core’”, it would “focus on delivering key services that are currently mismanaged” and reform public sector pensions.

“In the government’s position, we would start educating the public to accept that it is not the government’s role to address every issue in society,” Mr Broughton said. “How many of the 1000 quangos costing £65 billion a year do we really need?”

Too right. Individual responsibility is one of the first steps to rebuilding society in my view. And people in power making decisions. Good decisions. Not just referring an issue to another committee or quango.

Broughton also went on to criticise the government’s introduction of a new 50p income tax rate. He said it was an attempt to “divert media attention away from this failure”. He added: “tearing up the manifesto commitment to the country’s entrepreneurial class – the major job creators – was nothing short of economic vandalism. What’s more – the tax take is likely to be minimal.”

Now, I have to admit that I would like the problem of being taxed at 50p in the £, but I have rather a long way to go until then! But taxing success is just a non-starter in my books. OK, we all have to pay tax.

But the government should let the wealth creators – and that includes all the UK’s small businesses – get on with creating wealth and employment. And stop saddling us all with more bureaucratic legislation that stifles creativity. And more tax.

Government should focus on core activities says CBI