Chancellor Gordon Brown last night vowed to wage a war on regulation - the bane of West Midlands business.

In a speech to the Institute of Directors in London, Mr Brown said he would use his Pre Budget Report on December 5 to deal with the issue.

And he acknowledged the strength of feeling.

"It is what makes us all full of frustrations and making a real difference by cracking this problem would help us all," he pledged. Mr Brown accepted that a blanket approach to regulation had "reached the ridiculous state of affairs that national chain of shops or businesses operating in hundreds of different places and doing so under the same national company rules and regulations, can be subject to hundreds of different regulators and inspectors requiring information".

He continued: "So in the Pre Budget Report I will show how our new model of regulation can apply to processes and procedures from health and safety and the environment to tax and the financial services.

"From the old model of inspection of premises, procedures and practices irrespective of known risks or past results to a new model that is quite different: a risk based approach that means no inspection without justification, no form filling without justification and no information requirements without justification.

"And thus instead of an implicit threat of 100 per cent inspection, limited only by resources, inspection where only high risk can be identified - in future not just a light touch but a limited touch."

He said the new approach would be driven by private sector business leadership and he repeated a previous commitment to reduce the number of inspection agencies from 31 to seven.

Mr Brown said he would cut the number of inspections themselves by a third - in total one million fewer - and slash the amount of form filling by one quarter.

"And this is an approach I want to extend not just to the implementation of regulation, but to their design and indeed to the decisions about their development," he said.

His comments came as he again warned public sector workers not to expect inflationary pay rises.

Mr Brown said half of the recent rise in inflation was because of oil prices and they should be ready to accept two per cent increases - the same as the Bank of England's inflation target.

"There will be no taking risks with inflation, no let up in our demand for restraint in wage settlements, and no relaxation of our fiscal grip," he said.

His comments have already angered unions.

But Mr Brown said the public sector had to play its part.

And he also highlighted competition as important to keeping goods prices low.

"The test as to whether this downward pressure will continue will not just be whether Asian manufactured costs remain low, but whether competitive pressures in our economy remain high."

Britain aimed to be number one in the world in stability, creative skills, financial services, science and education and "in our willingness and desire to trade with every part of the world in which we live".

He added: "Globalisation is indeed made for Britain."