The government’s retained EU law bill always was – and still remains – a dangerous stunt, even after a significant change was made to it this week. The bill aims to scrap thousands of laws and rules adopted by UK law while Britain was part of the EU. It was devised by Jacob Rees-Mogg when Boris Johnson was prime minister. It then became the subject of a Brexiter bidding war between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak during the Conservative leadership election last summer, as a result of which a deadline of the end of 2023 was added by Ms Truss for the laws to be wiped from the statute book.
This week, the trade secretary, Kemi Badenoch, announced that the 2023 deadline has now been scrapped. Instead, some 600 EU-derived laws will be removed by the year’s end and the remainder, more than 4,000 at the last count, will be the subject of “assessment and consultation” with a view to most of them also being scrapped eventually. Removing the arbitrary deadline makes the bill a bit less destructive. But it is still dogmatic and dangerous.
