THE Department of Trade and Industry has spent £66 million issuing 10,000 publications since Labour took office, on subjects ranging from the merits of corned beef tins to the facts about junk mail.

The huge amount of information flowing from the department means that the DTI publishes nearly five documents every day, at an average daily cost of nearly £30,000.

For the first ten months of last year alone, the department sent out four million hard copies of publications — about one for every business in the country. However, that marks a reduction in publication distribution. In 2003 the department sent out eight million documents and in 2004 it sent out 6.5 million.

The vast flow of DTI information was disclosed in a parliamentary answer to the Liberal Democrats. Alan Johnson, the Trade and Industry Secretary, said the DTI’s statistics were unable to distinguish between publications sent to businesses and those sent to individuals.

Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrats’ trade and industry spokesman, said: “These figures further highlight the uphill battle that British businesses face against the barrage of paperwork generated from Government — let alone how they manage to keep up with the compliance for the continued flow of new regulations.”

The DTI’s publications stretch from consumer law and employment regulations to policy consultations and industry analysis. It currently has nearly 4,000 documents that are still available with more than 2,500 on view on its website.

A spokeswoman for the DTI said: “We are trying to encourage people to move to web-based publications but many of our customers prefer hard copies. Although the numbers produced are higher than we would wish the numbers are going down.”

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