Definition of "red tape"

At twilight in the summer there is never anybody to fear—man, woman, or cat—in the chambers and at that hour the mice come out. They do not eat parchment or foolscap or red tape, but they eat the luncheon crumbs.

1892, Walter Besant, chapter II, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […]

That committee does not cut through red tape ; it merely provides better scheduling for different agencies so you do not have sequential review by different agencies , so that you have some kind of simultaneity in the review by different agencies.

1979, United States Senate, Committee on Finance, Crude Oil Tax‎, U.S. Government Printing Office

One conspicuous cost of the compromise reached was a promise made by Senator Chuck Schumer to Manchin on what was vaguely called permitting reform: a catchall phrase referring to a whole host of efforts to cut red tape and ease the rollout of energy infrastructure.

2022 October 5, David Wallace-Wells, “Progressives Should Rally Around a Clean Energy Construction Boom”, in The New York Times‎

They said we’d be free of all that tedious European red tape and would take back control of our borders, encouraging anyone agitated by immigration to believe that fewer people would come in. […] Post-Brexit red tape is strangling thousands of small businesses, whether travelling musicians or exporters of goods, tying them up in daunting forms or extra charges that cost time and money they don’t have.

2023 June 23, Jonathan Freedland, “With even leavers regretting Brexit, there’s one path back to rejoining the EU”, in The Guardian‎