Former minister Liam Fox has called on the Chancellor to deregulate the UK jobs market, making it easier to hire and fire workers, ahead of the government’s 21st of March budget.

Fox warned that too much regulation in the jobs market was hobbling growth in the British economy and he praised the current austerity policy for reassuring Britain’s creditors and investors, but he warned that if labour market regulations were not eased, emerging economies, such as India and China, would continue to gain a competitive advantage over the UK.

“To restore competitiveness we must begin by deregulating the labour market. Political objections must be overridden. It is too difficult to hire and fire, and too expensive to take on new employees,” he wrote in a comment piece for the Financial Times.   “It is intellectually unsustainable to believe that workplace rights should remain untouchable while output and employment are clearly cyclical.”

The ex-head of the Ministry of Defence waded into the debate on employee rights in an apparent attempt to pressurise George Osborne to include them in his budget announcement. Fox also called for a cut in employers’ National Insurance contributions.  Business lobby group the CBI stopped short of joining in Fox’s demands for a cut in employer’s NI to boost growth. Instead the CBI has urged the government to create a scenario of more modest tax breaks to drive growth in key areas like infrastructure.