23rd January 2023
Last week there was a (very popular) post on this blog about regulation and the supposed “bonfires” of “red tape”.
Most of the points in that post were general, but a particular point was made about the misconceived Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill.
That Bill contains this remarkable provision as clause 1:
In other words, laws – thousands of them – will all be repealed by automatic operation of law, unless specific exceptions are made.
And nobody knows how many:
Government now says 3200 pieces of identified and verified retained EU law so far (originally 2400). Dashboard to be updated to show this @UKandEU @jillongovt
— Catherine Barnard (@CSBarnard24) January 20, 2023
Rarely has there been an approach to legislation this daft, and it is hard to think of any legislative exercise where daftness has been on this scale.
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Of course, this causes confusion, including to business.
One may think businesses would welcome such drastic deregulation – but, in fact, businesses are far more welcoming to consistency.
In his speech today, the director general of the Confederation of British Industry addressed the problems of this Bill.
First, he did not dismiss regulatory divergence in principle:
“…I must say something about the UK’s regulatory divergence from Europe. The Government is convinced this is a major opportunity for growth. And I agree it can be too.
“But it’s a bit more complicated, than scrapping overnight many of the terms of trade we’ve used for decades.”
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So this means he is not opposed outright to what the government calls “Brexit opportunities”.
But it has to be done in a measured, case-by-case approach, and with hard realism:
“Because divergence is high-stake politics and economics.
“Often, we don’t consider the EU’s possible counterplay, and where they could outcompete us. We also need to recognise that divergence will often shrink our market size and/or add a skip-load of red tape. The party of deregulation risks simply doubling the amount we have.
“So, while it can definitely work – witness the historic success of the City of London and our rapid Covid vaccine approval – you have to run the numbers to make sure it’s not a complete own-goal.
“And it will take far more than a regulation play to make the UK win global share of global sectors.”
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He then mentioned concrete examples:
“…the Retained EU Law Bill [is] creating huge uncertainty for UK firms.
“Companies are asking will we really erode maternity and paternity regulation or health and safety standards like the General Product Safety Directive?
“Or rapidly change regulations on REACH, which governs the use of chemicals? With billions of pounds of industry costs?
“Or create the potential for firms being underinsured because it’s harder for analysts – who don’t know what laws will be retained – to effectively price risk into products?
“Do we really want to subject the public – and industry – to another round of mass confusion and disruption, just when we’re trying to exit recession?”
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The speech, however, did more than offer a critique, it also offered a contrast.
It referred to a development which I (and perhaps also you) missed just before Christmas: the appointment of Patrick Vallance and others to consider post-Brexit regulation in five particular areas – digital technology, green industries, life sciences, advanced manufacturing and the creative industries.
The speech avers:
“The Chancellor has appointed Sir Patrick Vallance to lead a thorough review into securing possible prizes in five high-growth sectors. This is the right approach. Serious reflection and consideration.
“The complete opposite in fact of the Retained EU Law Bill […]
“Instead, let’s review, retain, reform and – where appropriate – repeal EU law the Vallance way. Smartly. Not the Retained EU Law Bill’s way. Foolishly.”
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This must be the correct approach in principle: “the Vallance way”.
Yes, the Vallance review may come to nothing.
Indeed, it may never be heard from again: such reviews come and go, and sometimes even disappear with anyone noticing, or caring.
But as a statement of principle, this approach is compelling.
And it shows that even this government is capable of going about legislative and regulatory reform the right way.
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The CBI cannot be regarded as a vehicle for remoaners.
And the speech today was not expressly or implicitly a call for the United Kingdom to rejoin the European Union – or even just the single market.
It was instead refreshingly post-Brexit – about how we go about making policy and laws within our shifted post-Brexit parameters.
The more our politics and policy-making moves in this direction, the better.
The absolutist clamour of Brexiters and the purist refusal of Remainers are both, in their ways, failures to practically deal with our post-Brexit situation.
The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill is now as much an artefact from yesteryear as a leaflet calling for a further referendum.
We are at last moving, slowly, into post-Brexit politics and policy-making – and the government needs to catch up.
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Correct me if I am wrong, but we were in the EU when the Covid vaccines were approved.
Before we joined the EEC the City of London was actually a relative backwater.
Its historic success was during our time in the EEC/EU.
The Big Bang took place in 1986, not 1966.
Towards the end of last year and after we had left the EU, British based pension funds mislaid an estimated £500 billion so deregulation of the City is unlikely to inspire confidence in investors.
Both the Tories and Labour would have British based pension funds invest in the construction of capital projects and subsequent ownership of them on completion and plan to make it easier for them to invest in such risky projects, preferably at home, not abroad.
It is unlikely that the pension funds will put money into projects that may never yield a steady profit.
Pension funds may own shares in a definite earner, like HS1, but they will not fund the building of an HS3 which is what both the Government and the Opposition want.
I am not convinced that someone who cannot get his facts straight advances the debate much, if at all.
And Tony Danker was head of an organisation, Be the Business set up more than a decade ago to “improve the productivity of UK business”.
I gather that remains a bit of a problem and of course Brexit will not make improving productivity any better, particularly given our politician’s aversion to migrant labour.
Danker did mention migration in his speech, but he’s another one of those folk who believes (genuinely?) we may wean ourselves off employing a growing number of migrant workers.
We cannot.
And that is why some of us opposed Brexit and, subsequently, Hard Brexit.
Our economy will continue to contract and jobs across our economy go unfilled whilst the reality of the increasingly negative consequences of the explosion of the United Kingdom’s demographic time bomb continues to be denied.
Until we have a serious debate about the consequences of denying the employers of 50% of the jobs in our labour market any ability to recruit from abroad when before Brexit they could at least trawl through a labour market of 32 states then it is still Brexit Groundhog Day.
Well observed.
Well, on the specific claim about the COVID vaccines, the UK left the EU at 11pm on 31 January 2020.
There was an 11 month transition period to 31 December 2020 but the UK had already ceased to be an EU member state.
The Pfizer COVID vaccine was fast-tracked to temporary regulatory approval in the UK on 2 December 2020, and the AZ vaccine was approved for use in the UK on 30 December 2020. The EMA granted conditional marketing authorization in the EU for both within a few weeks – specifically, for Pfizer on 21 December 2020 and for AZ on 29 January 2021.
But on the general thrust of your point – yes, the UK joined the EEC in the first place because we were lagging behind on economic development in the late 1960s and early 1970s. And now I have every expectation that we will fall behind again, because that it what happens when a country cuts itself off from its nearest and largest overseas market.
Excellent points, well made, John.
Well, well…in a strategy to improve ‘business’ across the region Argentina and Brazil announce their intention to create a single currency (which other South American countries will likely join).
Only fools and knaves will not admit that Brexit is a nothing burger; and the sooner this outrageous endeavour is reversed, the sooner the UK’s £2tn + (and tanking) national debt can be seriously addressed.
Not since WW2 has the Holy Grail of growth/money been so desperately needed for the good of our Public Sector finances and the people of this country.
Excellent points.
Mr Danker has missed the fundamental point that fiddling with the rules will not gain anything.
The CBI should speak truth to power.
In theory we are ‘post-Brexit’ and yet we cannot shrug it off.
If this Bill becomes law it will remind us regularly as each consequence arises of its origins.
If it is delayed the debate will go on. What it cannot do is go away. The decisions taken since 2016 will continue until they are reversed.
EU rules are constantly changing .
The EU is “diverging” from the UK even if the UK revokes nothing.
What do you mean by “the purist refusal of Remainers”?
Refusal to accept what? I know of no former Remainers who do not accept that Brexit has happened and that the path back to a more productive, rational relationship with our closest neighbours and largest market will be long and hard. Yet I keep reading articles seeking to propose a path between Brexit and Remainer ideologues, as if they were equally unreasonable.
Further to a post elsewhere today – https://davidallengreen.com/2022/12/how-three-bills-now-before-parliament-tells-us-the-story-of-brexit/ – rather than a big bang event with the aim of abolishing everything within a short period unless it is specifically retained, it would be wiser to employ a longer and more gradual process like that adopted by the Law Commission since 1965 to propose repeals of spent, obsolete or unnecessary Acts of Parliament (or parts of Acts) across the whole of UK statute law.
The first Statute Law (Repeals) Act was passed in 1969. There have been over a dozen more statue law repeals Acts in the decades since then, with the latest Statute Law (Repeals) Act passed in 2013. The Law Commission published its 20th report on statute law repeal in 2015.
The unseemly ideological haste to abolish UK laws from the last few decades since 1972 – many of which still have important effects – contrasts starkly with the slow and deliberative approach to repealing obsolete and unnecessary English laws from the previous eight centuries. Almost as if some politicians just want to take advantage of the current parliamentary majority to push as far as they can, and don’t really care what damage they do along the way.
I really miss the one about “being abroad at an hour when all decent folk are abed.”
Obviously the UK is no longer an EU member state, but I fear the process of arriving at a new post-Brexit relationship between the UK and the EU has not finished, indeed barely even started, and may not settle for quite some time.
In that context, and with an eye to the negotiations on various outstanding issues between the UK and the EU that will continue for the foreseeable future, I attended a very interesting lecture yesterday from Stefaan De Rynck, former aide to Michel Barnier, on his recent book on “how the EU got Brexit done”.
https://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/2023/02/202302061830/brexit
In a nutshell, they agreed a negotiating mandate with the remaining 27 member states, did not deviate from their positions, and waited patiently while the Article 50 clock ran down for the UK to decide what it really really wanted. After the “Brexit means Brexit” nonsense and then the 2017 hung parliament, the UK finally became able to take and implement decisions after the December 2019 election.
I’d suggest anyone involved in future negotiations should read and digest.