THE Scottish Executive published its first annual report on improving regulation yesterday. That's cutting the burden of government red tape to you and me. And the main message to business from enterprise minister Jim Wallace could be summed up in a well-worn, three-word excuse: it wisnae us.

"The annual report demonstrates that the EU and UK are the main sources of regulations affecting Scotland, " claimed Wallace. "That is why I have been raising these matters in my recent meetings in Brussels and Whitehall. I am determined to workwith business to tackle the issue of regulation at home, in London and in Europe."

On the face of it, good businessfriendly rhetoric. Telling London and Brussels when to get off business's backwill do the deputy first minister no harm in political terms. But persuading higher tiers of government to listen is never going to produce quick results.

It might have been better if this 34-page report - itself a daunting read, when all associated material is thrown in, for anyone in business already struggling to find the time to come to terms with the regulations themselves - had devoted more of its energy and focus to those aspects of unnecessary red tape being spun right here in Scotland. And what is actually being done to cut back on it.

Of 30 regulatory impact assessments (RIAs) carried out by the executive in the year to March 2004, 11were triggered by specifically Scottish initiatives. That's more than a third of the total. Yes, the other 19 related to measures emanating from Brussels. And in the background there were another 182 RIAs completed in Whitehall, 30 of them dealing with EU initiatives.

But the home-bred agenda is scarcely marginal. So why pass the buck in this way? In his foreward, Jim Wallace talks of engineering a culture change. "No minister introduces regulation for its own sake, " he writes. "We take seriously our responsibility to protect individuals, society and the environment. But our top priority is to grow the Scottish economy in a sustainable way."

That last sentence is cast in bold type. The intent seems clear. In striking a balance between the need to regulate business to protect the consumer, the employee, the environment orwhatever and its determination to see Scotland grow faster, this government wants to make it easier for Scottish businesses to compete and grow. The report claims progress to date should not be underestimated. But in all the welter of paper surrounding this publication, it is very hard to put your finger on what that progress is. Yes, every measure with any conceivable regulatory impact on business now goes through the RIA process. There are 58 of them listed on the executive's website, 37 of them completed in 2003, another 21 so far in 2004.

They range from the Honey (Scotland) Regulations 2003 to restrictions on the use of lead shot in Scotland, which completed its assessment this year. The honey regulations implement a European Commission directive from 2001.

They replace older rules for the labelling of honey dating from the 1970s. But it comes as something of a shock, in an eleven-page RIA, to come upon a sentence concluding "the rules. . . . are very similar to those they replace."

The lead shot restrictions stem from something called the AfricanEurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement. They seek to restrict the use of lead shot on or over wetland areas. Similar restrictions were first implemented in England and Wales, replacing an earlier voluntary code. Scotland came rather late to the action.

Is that a big issue for business?

That RIA takes seven pages to tell us "it is not considered there will be a significant effect on either manufacturers or retailers who trade in shotgun cartridges."

However, one does sense a whole new hive of activity within the executive and its agencies, all designed to churn out this stuff.

What does it all cost? We are not told. But since the whole Improving Regulation in Scotland (IRIS) apparatus was set up, way back in 1999, significant additional costs, not least in civil service manpower, must have been racked up to prove to business that government in Scotland is taking their concerns seriously.

Yet according to the latest survey research recorded in this red tape annual report, less than one in six businesses in Scotland say regulation is their main obstacle. Only the agriculture and utilities sectors regard the burden of regulation as their main gripe.

Hardly surprising, since the former, under the common agricultural policy, has been turned into a form-filling subsidiary of Brussels and the latter, as predominantly the fruit of two decades of privatisation, continues to be heavily regulated.

But across production industries as a whole, cash flow is nearly three times as important as the regulatory burden. In services, the level of taxation matters most. And in construction, cash flow, recruitment and competition all loom larger as challenges. Intriguingly, businesses run by women and businesses with growth ambitions are also more likely to play down the significance of regulation.