Rishi Sunak has been accused by a senior Tory Eurosceptic of throwing only “trivial” or obsolete EU-era laws on to a long-promised “bonfire of Brussels red tape”.
Sir Bill Cash, chair of the Commons European scrutiny committee, derided the list of 600 pieces of EU-derived law identified by ministers for repeal by the end of 2023.
He said the list included quota rules relating to wheat bran imports into the French territory of Réunion and the setting of fishing opportunities for anchovies in the Bay of Biscay for the 2012 fishing season.
Cash also highlighted measures relating to fishing in São Tomé and Príncipe as among more than 150 EU rules relating to fishing that are set to be scrapped.
Another measure related to “limits to working hours for drivers during the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak”, Cash noted.
Conservative Eurosceptics are furious with Sunak for watering down the retained EU law (REUL) bill, which is this week being scrutinised in the House of Lords.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary who drew up the original bill, has accused Sunak of behaving like the Borgia family, which became synonymous with treachery in Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Sunak has scrapped the “sunset clause”, under which all EU-era bills would have to be reviewed or scrapped by the end of 2023, in favour of a schedule of 600 pieces of legislation to be binned.
But in a letter to Sunak, Cash said his committee’s initial assessment of the schedule found that “almost without exception” the measures contained in it were “trivial, obsolete and are not legally and/or politically important”.
“Revocation of this REUL cannot be construed as lightening the regulatory burden for businesses or spurring economic growth,” Cash wrote. “This is a worrying mischaracterisation and begs the question as to what the real purpose of the schedule is.”
Kemi Badenoch, business secretary, announced the retreat last week, arguing that a rush to review or scrap all EU laws by the end of the year was unrealistic and undesirable.
Business groups, trade unions and charities had warned that the breakneck rush to carry out the purge of EU laws could endanger valuable protections for consumers, workers and the environment.
As well as scrapping specific laws, the groups have warned, the bill still hands so-called Henry VIII powers to ministers that will enable EU-derived laws to be changed without proper scrutiny in future.
Greener UK, a coalition of 10 of the UK’s largest conservation groups, including the RSPB and the National Trust, said the list of 600 laws slated for deletion had also raised specific concerns in the areas of water management and air pollution control.
They cited laws governing how water resources are analysed in environmental impact assessments, warning that deleting existing laws before replacements were on the statute book could leave “fundamental gaps” in the laws for managing water supply.
The group added that the government was also proposing to remove some of the 2018 National Emission Ceilings Regulations that requires the government to explain how it will meet targets for reducing pollutants such as nitrogen oxide and ammonia.
Ruth Chambers of the Greener UK coalition said that unless oversight provisions were strengthened in the bill, the legislation would hand future governments the powers to weaken environmental rules.
“If this bill passes as drafted, future governments will be able to weaken environmental rules with impunity. Key laws affecting rivers or chemical safety would be at risk for years to come,” she said.
Employment groups have also warned that the government’s commitment to remove the “supremacy” of EU law from the UK legal system would create huge uncertainty because it would remove the legal precedents on which UK courts had based their decisions.
“Neither employers nor employees will have clarity as to the meaning of large parts of employment law that affect investment and the cost of labour,” said Paul McFarlane, chair of the Employment Lawyers Association.
The TUC, the trade union umbrella organisation, said that the bill also laid the ground work for the government to reduce long-established protections on working hours and holiday pay. Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, said the government was “undermining working-time protections by stealth”.
