Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

Since Rees-Mogg was sacked resp. resigned by now, even this bill might change or get some alternations.

Former business secretary tells opponents of bill they are fighting a Brexit battle all over again

The former business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg launched a scathing attack on opponents of legislation he has tabled to sweep away EU law, telling them they are fighting a Brexit battle all over again.

Rees-Mogg quit his role after Rishi Sunak became prime minister, and less than two hours later returned to the backbenches to see a stand-in, the business minister Dean Russell, opening the second reading of the retained EU law (revocation and reform) bill.

Rees-Mogg told MPs the proposals were aimed at “restoring parliamentary sovereignty” and helping remove rules and regulations that supposedly put business under pressure.

In an extraordinary backbench spat, he accused a fellow Conservative MP of never accepting the result of Brexit, leading Richard Graham to demand the former minister withdraw the “untrue” statement.

Graham had objected to the speed with which the bill proposes to get rid of 2,400 laws. Through a sunset clause, laws that have not been actively saved by a government minister will automatically be switched off on 31 December 2023 under Rees-Mogg’s bill.

The shadow business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, told the house the bill was “not conducive to good laws”, saying the sunset clause “puts a gun to parliament’s head”.

The Scottish National party spokesperson Brendan O’Hara urged the new prime minister to scrap the bill, describing it as the “unwanted puppy that no one would particularly want in the first place that no one really cares for” given as a present by a man who has “flounced” out the door.

Rees-Mogg said the bill was about Britain taking back control, not about the process of law-making. “We are restoring parliamentary sovereignty,” he said. “This bill is first of all of fundamental constitutional importance because it is removing the supremacy of EU law.”

The bill has been sharply criticised by legal experts, who have said it gives ministers unprecedented and “undemocratic” powers to make or ditch laws without any consultation.

Unions, worried it could trigger a wave of deregulation of workers’ rights, say it is a “countdown to disaster”, while the Green party MP Caroline Lucas told MPs the bill was irresponsible and “ideologically driven”.

Rees-Mogg denied the government wanted to dilute workers’ rights or environmental protections. The government was not about to send “children up chimneys”, he said.

Russell, who was forced to step in for Rees-Mogg after his resignation, said the bill was designed to create “a more agile and innovative regulatory” regime that would “benefit people and businesses across the UK” and would “help us sweep away outdated and obsolete EU legislation, paving the way for future frameworks better suited to the needs of the UK”.

Reynolds denounced the bill, telling the house Labour’s opposition was “not about Brexit” but about the “power to sweep away” laws the government was conferring on ministers. “This bill risks diminishing democratic scrutiny and accountability in key areas of British law,” he said.

The former Brexit select committee chair Hilary Benn asked: “What is the justification for allowing ministers to scrap legislation that currently applies simply by doing nothing? Because of the sunset clause? I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

Labour’s Stella Creasy said she had been told in an answer to a parliamentary question that the list of laws on the government dashboard was “not comprehensive”, fuelling fears legislation could disappear accidentally.

The bill, she said, included the entire body of laws governing aircraft safety, cancer-causing ingredients in cosmetics, compensation for delayed trains and planes, and workers’ rights.

There were also signs of unease on the government benches with the former environment minister Rebecca Pow saying a review of “something like 572 laws relating to the Defra portfolio whether it’s sewage pollution, waste, water, air, pesticides” over just 15 months was a “very short time”. She urged the government to consider extending the sunset clause to 2026.

Rishi Sunak is considering deprioritising Jacob Rees Mogg’s controversial legislation to switch off 2,400 retained EU laws that cover everything from holiday pay rights to environmental protections and aircraft safety.

The new prime minister has been told it would take 400 staff in the business department alone to review 300 pieces of legislation that resulted from directives, decisions and EU rules over the past 50 years, the Financial Times reported.

According to a government website outlining the scope of the retained EU law (revocation and reform) bill, a further 570 laws would have to be reviewed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs before the deadline of the end of 2023.

Under the proposed legislation, which received its second reading in the House of Commons this week, all laws whether reviewed or not would be switched off by the government on 31 December 2023, placing a huge burden on the civil service.


Government dashboard outlining numbers of retained EU laws that would disappear under the proposed legislation. Photograph: Cabinet Office

Officials in the Department for Transport would have to review 424 laws, while the Treasury would have to divert staff to review 374 laws at a time when they face enormous challenges because of the cost of living crisis.

Officials in HM Revenue and Customs would hvae to review 228 laws, while those in the Department for Work and Pensions would need to review 208.

British inventions are being brought to market overseas because new Brexit safety certification rules mean they can’t be sold in the UK.

Trade bodies and entrepreneurs have blamed the government’s decision to stop accepting the European Union’s CE mark and instead create a new UK Conformity Assessed (UKCA) mark showing that a product is safe.

When the new system is in place, it means a manufacturer will need to pass one set of tests for the EU and another for the UK, creating extra layers of red tape. But some things cannot yet be tested because the UK has no facilities to test building products including glue, sealants and glass, or some medical supplies.

An entrepreneur in the UK told the Observer that he had not been able to have a medical device certified in the UK or EU and so had set up a company in the US, where the product will be manufactured and sold. Medical industry sources said British companies were also setting up divisions in Japan.

The change from CE to UKCA was meant to happen last year but was delayed and will now come into effect on 31 December 2022 at midnight, European time. But ministers further delayed compulsory UKCA markings for electrical products like iPhones, so CE markings can still be used until 2025.

Then, last week, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency announced that it was recommending a delay until July 2024 for medical products.

Yet some sectors will still face a cliff edge on New Year’s Day, and the Construction Leadership Council, representing the building industry, wrote to new business secretary Grant Shapps and new housing secretary Michael Gove last week, warning them that plans for new homes, schools and hospitals were being affected. “Approximately 28% of products are imported, and half of [those] from the EU, and therefore these products are also affected,” the letter states. “As a result, many global manufacturers now regard the UK as just too difficult to do business with, which has resulted in products being withdrawn – impacting on the UK’s ability to deliver completed projects.”

One of the letter’s authors, Peter Caplehorn, chief executive of the Construction Products Association, said: “This is affecting inward investment [and] innovation. Products are under continuous development and, from the turn of the year, if any product is substantially changed or upgraded, then it will need recertification.

“We’ve got one testing facility in the UK [for] radiators. And they’ve done an analysis on the amount of radiators that they put through their system. If they have to retest all of them, it would take 75 years.”

Steve Lee, director of diagnostics regulation for the Association of British Healthtech Industries (ABHI), said the MHRA’s delay would be helpful, but the uncertainty was already causing serious problems. “People are not seeing the UK or the EU as a place to innovate and bring new products to market,” he said. “People are looking at other jurisdictions because the regulatory landscape is so uncertain.”

A major change to EU legislation means that manufacturers face a similar problem in Europe. The changes – introduced after scandals relating to ruptured breast implants and metal-on-metal hip implants – have also caused a backlog in medical device testing in the EU. One in 10 of the UK’s medical device manufacturers has stopped attempting to innovate, according to an ABHI survey of its members.

Around 600,000 medical products – from syringes and surgical instruments to HIV tests and prosthetic hips – are used in the UK, but ABHI members reported in a survey this month that one in five will be taken off the market in the next five years. Two-thirds expect new devices will be delayed in coming to the UK. “Almost certainly there will be products which are either temporarily or permanently unavailable for use in the UK,” Lee said.

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said there was more uncertainty arising from the government’s decision to allow CE-marked products in Northern Ireland, which has no trade barriers with the EU.

“By the end of 2025, CE-marked products made in Northern Ireland will be able to circulate in Britain, but those from the EU, Switzerland or Turkey won’t,” said William Bain, the BCC’s head of trade policy. “How will they differentiate between products made in Northern Ireland and those that are imported into Northern Ireland and then sent over to Great Britain? All of that needs to be resolved, and it’s causing great uncertainty.”

Manufacturers represented by Make UK want ministers to phase in regulations, and three quarters want the CE mark to continue to be recognised. If UK regulations diverge substantially, two identical cars for the UK and EU might need to be made with hundreds of different components.

Opinion - Charles Clover

Our cod populations – which belong to King Charles on behalf of the people – are declining precipitously

here are few sadder symbols of post-Brexit Britain, or of its deliberate assault upon nature, than the national dish, fish and chips, and the fate of one of its principal ingredients, the cod. Cod are tasty creatures but they are severely overfished in UK waters, a fact masked by plentiful supplies reaching fish and chip shops until recently from Iceland, Norway, and – ah yes – Russia.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has given us one of two reasons why we urgently need to save our favourite fish from 40 years of mismanagement. The first is to protect our own future food security. Just when the price of cod and other materials has rocketed, leading our fish and chip shops to call for more cod from our own waters, stocks are around their worst levels on record. These national assets – which, under British law, belong to the king on behalf of the people – have declined precipitously in the past four decades.

Through the lens of the cost of living crisis, what has gone on looks like a flagrant sellout of the public interest. Take the west of Scotland cod, one of five breeding populations in UK waters and the one that has suffered the worst declines. Catch limits for the west of Scotland cod have been set above scientific advice, ludicrously, every year for the past 35 years. Inevitably, the west of Scotland cod has declined by 92% since 1981.

Trawl fishers in the west of Scotland prefer to catch langoustines, which are more valuable than cod and present all the year round. But the huge bycatch of juvenile white fish, such as cod, means these species never recover. The Scottish parliament’s rural affairs committee heard recently that there could be about 3.5m baby cod in the Firth of Clyde and yet 2m of them are being killed every year by langoustine trawlers as bycatch.

With the right management – more creeling or potting for scampi, for instance, and an inshore prohibition on trawling – cod could be nursed back to profusion. Is that not where the public interest lies? Instead, the tendency of politicians and officials has been to defer to the most damaging and heavily indebted fleets, in defiance of scientific rationality or wise stewardship of a national asset.

This perverse behaviour is not exclusive to Scotland. In the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea, fishing for other species continues apace, though scientists advise a zero catch of cod, which is not enforced. In the North Sea, where there was a recovery plan for the cod a decade ago, stocks actually began to recover. Then politicians and officials gave in and set catch limits at levels that made recovery impossible.

The travesty of setting quotas above scientific advice was supposed to have been stopped by the post-Brexit Fisheries Act. It was said this was going to deliver a “gold standard” of sustainable fisheries and make Britain a “world leader” in protecting the sea. The result has been rather different. Last December ministers and officials signed an agreement with the EU that allowed 65% of all catch limits to be set above scientific advice. Even allowing for a degree of chaos as the EU started working with Britain as an independent coastal state, that is a total disgrace.

Which brings us to the second reason why it is time to bring back British cod: because we can. Brexit creates an opportunity to do our seas and our fishers a favour by managing fish stocks for recovery. We need to make our Fisheries Act work, or politicians and officials will go on managing our fish stocks and our seas as badly as they did before.

To that end, a group of us – including Blue Marine Foundation, the charity I work for; the National Federation of Fish Friers; the Angling Trust; and Our Seas, a Scottish coalition of 100 fishing and environmental groups – are asking people to sign a parliamentary petition calling on the government to negotiate with the EU sustainable catch limits for all five populations of cod in UK waters this year. We need 10,000 signatures for the government to respond and 100,000 to trigger a debate in the House of Commons.

The proposition is uncontroversial: it simply asks the government to do what it always claims to do, but never actually does – manage fish stocks sustainably so they can rebuild. It effectively says that after two decades in which public consciousness about the state of our seas has been raised by television programmes such as The Blue Planet, The End of the Line and Hugh’s Fish Fight, we expect better.

We wait to hear whether the environment secretary Thérèse Coffey’s team will scrap the “attack on nature” in Liz Truss’s growth plan – the insane repeal of 570 hard-fought-for pieces of environmental legislation. I hope they will. What is certain is that the attack on nature represented by the annual setting of fisheries catch limits is about to begin.

Only, this time things may be different. The EU is coming under pressure in the European court to obey its own, unheeded law that says it should have banned overfishing by 2020. Meanwhile, lawyers are looking at the many pieces of UK legislation that say fish catches should be set at levels that enable fish such as cod to recover. If catch limits are set far above scientific advice again this December, I have a new year’s prediction: the UK government could be in court, charged with squandering the king’s fish.

Charles Clover is executive director of the Blue Marine Foundation and author of Rewilding the Sea: How to Save our Oceans

However Jeremy Hunt did not deny there are ‘costs’ to the decision to leave the EU.

The Chancellor has insisted he does not accept the premise that “Brexit will make us poorer”, but he acknowledged the move came with “costs”.

Jeremy Hunt said he believes the UK can make a “tremendous success” of leaving the EU.

However he stressed this will not happen “automatically”, adding he will set out some of the ways Britain might seize on the benefits in his upcoming budget.

Mr Hunt said it is important to consider the effects of Brexit “in the round”, as the decision brings both “costs” and “opportunities”.

Last week, former Bank of England governor Mark Carney doubled down on his claims the move has taken a toll on the pound, suggesting the decision to leave the EU continues to play a part in the UK’s financial woes.

Downing Street has suggested Rishi Sunak is no longer dwelling on the “clear decision” made by the British people six years ago.

Mr Hunt told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: “I believe we can make a tremendous success of it, but it’s not going to happen automatically.

“What you’ll hear on Thursday is some of the ways that I think we can make a success of it.”

Asked if he denies Brexit has slowed economic growth at home, Mr Hunt said: “What I don’t accept is the premise that Brexit will make us poorer.

“I don’t deny there are costs to a decision like Brexit, but there are also opportunities, and you have to see it in the round.

“Literally within months of formally leaving the EU we had a once-in-a-century pandemic, which has meant the process of outlining what the opportunities are has taken longer, but I think we need to do that now.”

He said he does not think Brexit is the “biggest issue” with the UK’s economic performance, adding: “I think it’s much more to do with other factors in the labour market.”

There would be no “austerity budget” this week if Brexit had not “permanently damaged” the UK economy, a former Bank of England policy chief says.

Michael Saunders said the huge spending cuts and tax rises to be announced on Thursday are a direct consequence of Boris Johnson’s skeleton trade deal, which had killed growth.

“It’s reduced the economy’s potential output significantly, eroded business investment,” said the former external member of the Bank’s monetary policy committee, which sets interest rates.

“If we hadn’t had Brexit, we probably wouldn’t be talking about an austerity budget this week. The need for tax rises, spending cuts, wouldn’t be there, if Brexit hadn’t reduced the economy’s potential output so much.”

On Sunday, the chancellor Jeremy Hunt provoked ridicule when he denied leaving the EU had made Britain poorer – despite that being the conclusion of the Treasury’s own spending watchdog.

But Mr Saunders told Bloomberg TV: “The UK economy as a whole has been permanently damaged by Brexit.”

On Thursday, in a landmark autumn statement, Mr Hunt is expected to unveil £35bn of cuts and £20bn of tax hikes, mainly from dragging more people into paying income tax despite rampant inflation.

The Treasury argues it faces a fiscal “black hole” of up to £60bn, but it has been previously calculated that lower growth since Brexit has swiped around £40bn of annual tax revenues.

Mr Saunders’ comment came as a former environment secretary admitted the post-Brexit trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand – the only new deals the UK has signed – had brought little benefit.

“I no longer have to put such a positive gloss on what was agreed,” George Eustice told MPs, adding: “The Australia deal is not actually a very good trade deal for the UK.

“We did not actually need to give Australia nor New Zealand full liberalisation of beef and sheep. It was not in our economic interests to do so.

“And neither Australia nor New Zealand had anything to offer in return for such a grand concession.”

On Sunday, Mr Hunt told the BBC: “What I don’t accept is the premise that Brexit will make us poorer”, insisting “there are also opportunities and you have to see it in the round”.

But Mr Saunders said the government should be focusing on “improving trade links with the EU”, along with investing in education and tackling long-term sickness keeping working-age people out of jobs.

Britain’s flagship post-Brexit trade agreement with Australia “was not actually a very good deal” and the UK “gave away far too much for far too little in return”, a member of the cabinet which pushed it through has admitted.

In a series of stinging remarks in the Commons, Johnson-era environment secretary George Eustice urged the government to recognise the Department for International Trade’s “failures” while negotiating what it hailed last December as a “historic” deal.

The agreements with Australia and New Zealand are the only new trade deals signed since Britain left the European Union, and the contracts sparked claims of a “betrayal” among farmers who feared being undercut by cheaper imports.

In his comments on Monday, Mr Eustice said that the UK “did not actually need” to give Australia nor New Zealand full liberalisation in beef and sheep, and “it was not in our economic interest to do so” – echoing reports of his involvement in a “ferocious row” with Liz Truss over the matter at the time.

Relishing his newfound “freedom of the backbenches” after being relieved from his post by Ms Truss in September, Mr Eustice attacked the then-international trade secretary for “setting the clock against us” by imposing an “abitrary target” for the deal’s conclusion.

Brexit has added 6 per cent to UK food prices, a Bank of England official has said as inflation hit a 41-year high.

Dr Swati Dhingra also said British workers had taken a 2 per cent real terms cut in their wages due to the UK’s departure from the EU, as members of the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) appeared before parliament’s treasury committee.

Legal experts say bill, which threatens key workers’ rights, is reckless and badly designed

The government will face attempts to delay the deletion of up to 4,000 EU laws from UK statute books and stop the scrapping of key workers’ rights, with opposition parties set to table dozens of amendments next week.

The Scottish National party is planning to table about 50 amendments to the retained EU law (revocation and reform) bill, which has been described as “reckless” by legal experts who say it is badly designed and gives unprecedented powers to ministers to personally decide which laws stay and which go.

One of its key amendments, believed to be supported by several Conservative backbenchers, is to extend the date for deletion from the end of 2023 to 2026. This aimed at clause 1, which sets a deadline of December next year for all EU laws to be expunged unless they have been actively saved by a minister.

Labour is also planning a series of amendments. It has tabled proposals to retain key workers’ rights covering health and safety law, annual leave and maternity rights, as well as some environmental laws, rather than seeing them scrapped and replaced with new versions.

SNP MP Brendan O’Hara said: “In its current form, the bill rides roughshod over the devolution settlement, will scrap 2,500 laws overnight without parliamentary scrutiny, puts workers’ rights at risk, and will start a race to the bottom on food and environmental standards.
“As we promised we would do, SNP MPs are opposing this bill every step of the way. We have tabled over 50 amendments so far, and will be tabling more as the bill progresses … to prevent all of the above from happening.”

Devolved governments have called the bill a “power grab”, saying many of the laws being targeted by the government are devolved.

Environmentalists have also express concern. David Bowles, head of public affairs at the RSPCA, said last week that of the 570 environment laws being targeted, 44 cover animal welfare and “probably 31 are devolved”.

The amendments to the bill will be laid on Tuesday when the legislation arrives at committee stage in the Commons.

Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow, who is on the committee, said there were several options it should look at including a “sunrise clause”, whereby all EU law remains on the statute books until it is specifically reviewed, amended or updated.

Legal experts say one of the bill’s fundamental issues is the unprecedented powers it gives ministers and the lack of scrutiny incorporated into the process. The government has admitted it does not even know the definitive number of EU laws on the statute books.

The business minister, Nusrat Ghani, said research on identifying laws was ongoing in a letter to the committee.

She was responding to reports that the National Archives had found another 1,400 laws in addition to 2,400 laws originally identified by the government.

Ghani said the original government dashboard was not a definitive list but represented “the considered view of departments as to where Reul [retained EU law] is concentrated in their policy areas”.

The National Archives was commissioned to conduct a review of its database of legislation including decisions of the European Commission, and other EU laws that “have never been in force in the UK” and “legislation that has already been amended, repealed and replaced”.

Downing Street sources rejected suggestions that the Government could lead the UK towards a Swiss-style relationship with the bloc.

Senior figures in Rishi Sunak’s Government are reportedly considering putting the UK on the road to a Swiss-style relationship with the EU.

The Sunday Times reports that the move could take place over the next decade as the Government eyes up a closer relationship with the EU that avoids the current barriers to trade.

Any such shift, only a few years after Boris Johnson secured a deal with the EU after years of back-and-forth negotiations, would likely inflame backbench Tory Brexiteers.

Downing Street sources rejected the report but the Times suggested that behind closed doors some in Government have indicated that the pursuit of a frictionless trading relationship with the bloc requires moving to a Swiss-style arrangement over the next 10 years.

According to the paper, this would not extend to a return to freedom of movement.

UK considering Swiss-style links with EU – report

Opinion Editorial

Controversial briefings to the press by senior government figures reflect a change in the zeitgeist

The short, disastrous premiership of Liz Truss is beginning to look like the endpoint of a political trajectory that began with the Brexit referendum in 2016. The spectacular detonation of Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget by unimpressed markets was the moment when ideology met reality, and the Conservative party’s sovereigntist delusions were finally tested to destruction. In its aftermath, the high tide of Brexit has gone out, and a slow voyage back to economic sanity at last appears to be under way.

On Monday, Ms Truss’s successor, Rishi Sunak, was obliged to spend much of his visit to the CBI conference in Birmingham denying suggestions that the government was hoping to pivot to a closer Swiss-style relationship with the European Union. Switzerland enjoys significant and profitable access to the single market, and participates in EU research and education programmes, while making payments to the EU and aligning with its law. According to a Sunday Times report, government figures have privately discussed the possibility of just such a relationship for Britain. “Let me be unequivocal about this,” Mr Sunak countered robustly. “Under my leadership, the United Kingdom will not pursue any relationship with Europe that relies on alignment with EU laws … I voted for Brexit. I believe in Brexit and I know that Brexit can deliver.”

There is no reason to doubt the prime minister’s word on this. Already vulnerable as he embarks on a programme of tax rises, Mr Sunak knows that hardline Brexiters in the Tory party (enthusiastically assisted by the Daily Mail) would attempt to bring him down rather than countenance such a betrayal. When Theresa May floated something similar to a Swiss-style arrangement (the doomed Chequers deal), it proved to be the beginning of the end of her premiership. The European Research Group moved against her and Boris Johnson seized his chance.

Nor are there grounds for thinking that Brussels would play ball with what amounts to reheated cakeism. As the damage done by Brexit to the British economy plays itself out, the EU has no reason to revisit its position that Britain cannot enjoy those aspects of the single market which appeal to it, while rejecting those that don’t – such as the free movement of people. There will thus be no Swiss-style accommodation with the EU under the present government. But the fact that influential figures in Mr Sunak’s government felt able to brief such heresies to the press tells us something important.

According to polls, the number of Britons who believe it was a mistake to leave the EU now stands at 56%, compared with 32% who stand by the decision. Releasing its economic forecast before last week’s autumn statement, after being previously sidelined by Mr Kwarteng, the Office for Budget Responsibility stated baldly that Brexit had delivered a “significant adverse impact” on trade. The public has also noticed that Britain is the only G7 country still to have a smaller economy compared with before the pandemic, and has the worst growth rate. The flagship post-Brexit trade deal with Australia was “not actually a very good deal”, according to the former environment secretary, George Eustice.

The public’s take on these cumulative pieces of bad news – delivered as the country prepares for a record fall in living standards and a prolonged recession – is coalescing into a new common sense: the hard Brexit that Mr Johnson orchestrated, and on which Ms Truss attempted to double down, has palpably failed. For Mr Sunak, the leader of an ungovernable, divided party, it is – as he surely knows – too late to rescue the situation. But for Keir Starmer’s Labour, the Swiss speculation is another sign that an opportunity is opening up.