Brexit: UK plan to remove EU law sparks nations’ angeron January 31, 2022 at 9:20 am

The government has set out a plan to overhaul EU laws copied over after Brexit – a move it says will cut unnecessary “red tape” for businesses.

Downing Street said a “Brexit Freedoms Bill” will change how Parliament can amend or remove thousands of EU-era regulations that remain in force.

Boris Johnson said the move would “unleash the benefits of Brexit” and make British business more competitive.

But the plan was criticised by the devolved administrations.

Since Brexit the UK has moved away from EU laws in certain areas, including on immigration, payments to farmers, and gene-editing rules for crops.

But the prime minister has been under increasing pressure in recent months from MPs on the right of his party to go further.

Former Brexit minister Lord Frost resigned last year, calling for the government to deliver on the opportunities Brexit presented, adding: “You know my concerns about the current direction of travel.”

In an announcement for the two-year anniversary of the UK’s exit from the EU, No 10 said its new bill would ensure changes can be made more easily.

The government has signalled it wants to move away from EU rules over areas like artificial intelligence, data protection and clinical trials for new medicines.

Downing Street said the changes would build on others since Brexit, which include:

The UK copied over the laws to smooth its exit from the EU on 31 January 2020, and kept them during a transition period that ended in January 2021.

Since September, the government has been reviewing which of these it wants to keep in place, ditch or amend.

Under Brexit withdrawal legislation passed in 2018, retained EU laws have a legal status of their own – and a special process for changing them.

Downing Street said it wanted to make it easier for MPs to change these laws, arguing that removing or changing them could otherwise take years.

It did not specify the provisions in the bill or how it calculated the claim that businesses would save £1bn through the cutting of red tape.

The prime minister said the government’s bill would “further unleash the benefits of Brexit and ensure that businesses can spend more of their money investing, innovating and creating jobs”.

Legislation inherited after Brexit – “retained EU law” in the jargon – can only be changed if Parliament passes new laws.

But the “Brexit Freedoms Bill” will change that, by giving ministers more power to alter retained EU law more quickly, and not necessarily with votes in Parliament.

It’s very unlikely that the fussy clerks in the House of Commons will allow the government to give the bill such a political name, and so I bet it gets relabelled as something much more boring.

Whatever it’s called, to Conservative backbenchers it promises a bout of post-Brexit deregulation.

But the same MPs will also worry that it’s a power-grab by ministers at their expense.

It’s part of a policy blitz this week that’s visible from space.

There’s going to be a new compensation scheme for airline passengers whose flights are delayed. Also due is the paper fleshing out the PM’s flagship policy of “levelling up”.

But all of this could be made to look like a sideshow by two things the government has no control over: Sue Gray’s report into lockdown-busting parties in Whitehall that could drop at any time, and the diplomatic crisis between Ukraine and Russia.

However, the bill has sparked concerns in the devolved administrations – which have obtained new powers in certain policy areas since Brexit.

A source said that a meeting between the Attorney General Suella Braverman and devolved ministers on Saturday was “last-minute, fractious, and cack-handed”.

The Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution Angus Robertson said the bill would “undermine devolution”.

And Mick Antoniw, the Welsh Minister for the Constitution, said the UK government was driving a “coach and horses through the concept of mutual consent”.

The UK government said it would “continue to work closely with the devolved administrations”.

Meanwhile, Labour criticised ministers for not using Brexit to scrap VAT on energy bills, which had to be at least 5% in the EU.

Shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry said the public “overwhelmingly support” the change, adding: “It is time the government started listening”.