Chris Walker: A suitable hobby for Mr Brown – orchid growing

A hardened Hollywood mogul used to divide his time between running the studio and orchid growing. He found much that was similar in the two occupations. Careful breeding and tendering would create some beautiful flowers, but the really exceptional ones, known as sports, were freaks of nature. They occurred without warning or deliberate planning, in riotous contradiction of expectations.

I thought of the orchid grower this week when the Chancellor delivered his proposals for the delicate flower that is the entrepreneurial spirit. In what amounted to a mini-budget, preceding the Queen's speech (the cheek of it), he strung together a series of measures across most other ministers' departments.

The timing of this move, indeed the PR offensive which has seen Mr Brown on every front page, every day this week, needs some examining. Having come through a fairly unchallenging election, it is clear that he, and the Government in general, if we can distinguish the two at the end of Brown Week, are irked by the volume of Europhile criticism demanding a decision, any decision, on the euro.

It was against this background that the Chancellor seemed to be going for the age-old strategy of decoy. It may also explain why, yet again, we are told in the Entrepreneurs' Budget that we must try to be more American. Where was mention of Germany's highly successful Mittelstand of medium-sized companies? Has anyone in the Government even looked at that phenomenon?

The central proposals were tightened competition laws – Chief Executives could, in theory, go to jail in future – as well as welcome assaults on Business tax and VAT.

The most depressing aspect of the proposals was, not surprisingly for this Chancellor, their complexity. Mr Brown is a serial fiddler. His main challenge in this parliament, apart from making up his mind on the euro, must be to try to dismantle some of the forest of tax regulations he has created.

Take his proposals on a flat rate of VAT for small businesses. Businesses will be placed in one of up to 18 different flat-rate schemes depending on which sector it is thought to be in. Or what about the further reduction in capital gains tax on business assets (now only 10 per cent after two years). This follows on from the previous business asset changes, the abolition of indexation after a certain date, the introduction of the complex tapering system – it's all too much.

The British capital gains tax system is now like the old Schleswig-Holstein question – so complex that, as Lord Palmerston might have said, only three men in Europe understand it. One is dead, the second gone mad, and the third our own Iron Chancellor. The second must have been a tax accountant.

To be fair, at least the Government is trying. We are moving into an age of even lower taxation worldwide, thanks to US President George Bush and recent German reforms. UK plc must stay competitive by keeping an eye on what is going on overseas.

And the mantra of reduced bureaucracy will never lose its strength. I went through the forms for a small business to take on a new employee this week. The main, 27-page form, contained endless tax tables (superfluous for anyone who can use a calculator) and pretty pictures of yet other forms to be filled in. Meanwhile, it failed to answer some basic questions.

But the main problem of this government initiative is the same as the orchid grower's. It is almost impossible to create entrepreneurial spirit. The Government needs to differentiate between two spheres of policy. In business, it is not what you do, but what you do not do that is important. Fewer forms, less tax, less fiddling. It is by removing government from the field of business that the miracle will happen.

In other areas, such as education, there is much that can be done. Far too many graduates combine dubious word and number skills with complete inexperience of public presentations.

I spent election night drunk on the vast balcony of a Belgravia diplomatic club. I chatted with an extraordinary entrepreneur – a real sport in the orchid sense – who had built up a range of companies by the age of 33. He operated abroad, of course. I wonder what he would have thought of all those 27-page forms.