Many of you who read this column will, I hope, have some affinity with the issues and the concerns that have been voiced here over the last year.

I suppose that, if I could, I would ask for ten changes in the next year. They would be changes that may in some cases appear radical.

1. Red tape and regulation is still clearly the priority.

Recognition must be given to the difference between larger businesses and those with less than twenty employees. The time it takes to read, understand and then implement any piece of red tape needs to be determined. I think it should also be considered how much of an owner's or manager's time can and should be spent on this issue.

2. Think 'small' first and redefine small as those businesses under 20 employees where there is 'one desk', 'one person', to deal with everything.

3. Look not only at the impact that 'family friendly' policies have on a business but ensure that they are also 'business friendly'.

4. Ensure that the skills agenda is being truly demand driven.

5. Crime against business has to be prioritised and made a key performance Indicator. The cost to the region is estimated at over £123 million, accounting for at least 26 per cent of reported crime - yet a third of businesses no longer bother to report it.

I would like to see sentencing and deterrence actually match the crime

6. Get to grips with the pensions crisis and make sure that public sector - including MPs' pensions - are no longer at the expense of the private sector.

7. Simplify the whole of the tax system. At each Budget it has become more and more complicated - it is truly time for a genuine overhaul.

8. Put in place a fully integrated national transport strategy that recognises the fact that for business generally the use of the car is a necessity and not a luxury, and that if we are to change the way people behave, then we have to have a viable public sector system.

9. Limit the amounts that insolvency practitioners can charge at the expense of business creditors - these are too often the small businesses who cannot withstand a major loss.

10. Most important of all, listen to the concerns of small businesses, under-stand the very real differences that exist between small, medium and large.

* Mike Cherry is chairman of the West Midlands Policy Unit of the Federation of Small Businesses