We were honoured to be featured on a recent episode of the highly popular podcast The Rest Is Politics, where we put a critical question to Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart: Is bureaucracy putting the brakes on UK growth?

It’s a timely concern – especially as the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) warns that the UK may be stuck in a ‘low-growth trap,’ with productivity lagging, business investment weakening, and uncertainty weighing heavily on confidence.

But here’s the nuance: bureaucracy isn’t the enemy. Poorly enabled bureaucracy is 

While Chancellor Rachel Reeves pledged a ‘radical shake-up’ of bureaucracy earlier this year, many UK businesses welcomed the promise of streamlined regulation and faster decision-making. Her March 2025 meeting with regulators signalled her intent to cut red tape, reduce duplication, and make the system work for growth.

But six months on, the results are underwhelming with growth flatlining, productivity promises faltering and business confidence shaken. Despite pledges to reform business rates and support small firms, investment is still being held back by outdated rules and uncertainty.

At Wordsmith, we see bureaucracy not as a blocker, but as a framework. When empowered with the right tools bureaucracy can drive clarity, confidence, and growth.

Growth needs confidence – not complexity

The BCC’s latest forecast shows UK GDP growth ticking up slightly to 1.3% in 2025, but business investment is projected to grow by just 1.6%, a sharp downgrade from earlier expectations. Rising costs, tax uncertainty, and geopolitical tensions are making firms cautious.

Compounding this hesitation is the growing burden of legal complexity, which not only slows decision-making but also strains in-house legal teams already mired in bureaucratic processes. Rather than enabling strategic agility, many legal departments find themselves entangled in red tape, struggling to keep pace with regulatory shifts and compliance demands. This drag on internal capacity can without doubt put the brakes on investment and innovation. In this day and age it just isn’t sustainable.

Wordsmith enables legal teams to become catalysts for growth by simplifying the complex, automating labour-intensive administrative tasks, accelerating decision-making, and reducing the friction that slows business down.

Legal teams are the backbone of business continuity. But buried under contracts, risk reviews, and compliance checks, they’re often reduced to bottlenecks. We’re changing that. 

Wordsmith is rapidly redefining the role, skills, and expectations of in-house legal departments. It’s no longer just about efficiency; it’s about becoming strategic enablers of business outcomes – and the change is well underway.

According to our report The State of Legal AI Skills 2025, based on insights from over 500 legal professionals, executives, and AI practitioners, forward-thinking legal teams are using AI to scale their impact, sharpen precision, and align more closely with commercial goals.

The results speak for themselves

Speed: Contract review and drafting are now 50% faster on average, with some teams reporting reductions of up to 75% – equating to an average time-saving of two hours per document.

Capacity: The output of five lawyers now feels like that of 10-15.

Confidence: Executives confirm AI improves visibility into legal risk and strengthens alignment with business strategy and commercial goals.

And when asked which new skills are most critical for their roles, 80% pointed to workflow integration, underscoring the shift from passive adoption to active enablement.

Interestingly, despite fears of job displacement, not a single respondent reported a reduction in team size due to AI showing that AI is augmenting legal capacity rather than replacing it.

The private sector is already proving what’s possible when legal operations are empowered with the right tools. Now it’s time for government to follow suit.

Bureaucracy isn’t the problem – enablement is

As the Autumn Budget approaches, it presents a vital opportunity for the Chancellor to deliver the stability UK businesses need. We call for practical support to unlock investment, drive recruitment, and boost trade.

But fiscal policy alone isn’t enough. With fragile supply chains, geopolitical tensions, and persistent inflation, the UK economy remains vulnerable to shocks. What businesses need now are clear, adaptable frameworks that actively support growth. 

The UK’s growth challenge isn’t simply a matter of excessive governance, though streamlining is long overdue. The real issue is governance that’s too slow, too manual, too outdated and too disconnected from the pace of business.

Wordsmith empowers legal teams to be agile, responsive, and aligned with commercial goals. It’s the kind of enablement that must be mirrored across government infrastructure if we’re serious about unlocking growth. We believe the UK has the ability to be an AI powerhouse, it just needs to be unleashed.

So, is bureaucracy really killing UK growth? Only if we keep letting it. The problem isn’t regulation, it’s inertia. It’s time to stop treating red tape as inevitable and start enabling it with tech that turns friction into fuel. Wordsmith proves that when legal operations are empowered, bureaucracy can be a growth engine.

Want to see how Wordsmith can transform your legal team into a growth enabler? Book a demo and discover the future of legal operations.