I've written a few posts on here over the last few years about the question of which EU laws Brexiteers and leave voters want scrapped so desperately that we are prepared to suffer untold economic damage in order to have the freedom to do so. I asked the same question of leave voters many times on street stalls in various places across Yorkshire in 2018 and 2019 and they invariably claimed there were 'loads' but you rarely get anything specific and when you did, it was plainly and obviously wrong. James O'Brien at LBC radio still regularly asks callers the same question on his show. Well, we may soon have an answer.
I say this because Iain Martin, a columnist on The Times and keen Brexiteer, has let the cat out of the bag.
In an article yesterday, he admits that during the 2016 campaign this was the question he found so difficult that he broke into cold sweats. He writes:
"The question Brexiteers used to fear most during the referendum was short and simple. I was asked it a couple of times, suffering cold sweats on TV and in public debate, and will confess that I moved as quickly as possible back on to more comfortable territory such as self-government. The dreaded question was what, specifically, are the EU regulations you want to drop or diverge from after Brexit? If the EU and its rules are so dreadful, what would you change?"
We are now five years on, with a lot of stuff having been said and written about Brexit, its impact and purpose, how and why it happened and so on. Martin has been in the thick of it. He must have read and written millions of words about leaving the EU and will of course, find it a much easier question to answer now. Except that, err....he doesn't.
Don't misunderstand, he hasn't changed his mind, he still believes there are plenty of hidden EU directives and regulations that can be dumped to allow Britain to create a "model for rule-making in digital finance, life sciences, health, technology and data, where the economy of the future is being built and Britain has a chance to outperform the doomsayers." He just doesn't know what these egregious rules are and hasn't even bothered to try and find out.
But he is confident they are there somewhere and that someone else must know what and where they are:
"In fields such as finance, trade and life science there were and are nerdy Brexiteers who can produce lists of Brussels red tape that needs to be slashed to improve competitiveness. But they are a minority."
I wouldn't mind betting there were "nerdy Brexiteers" who read Martin's column yesterday and said to themselves, hang on, I thought YOU knew what all these 'burdensome EU regulations' were that we urgently need to scrap? The fact is there are no such laws, none of any significance anyway and certainly none which once scrapped would improve our competitiveness.
And far from slashing red tape, Brexit has delivered an entire mountain range of it as businesses struggle with all the extra paperwork. It has utterly crushed any attempt to try and raise our chronic levels of national productivity, the key to improving competitiveness.
What prompted Martin to write his piece was the publication of a report by the Institute for Government called: Taking Back Control of Regulation: Managing Divergence from EU Rules. This was the spark, plus the work of the Taskforce on Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform (TIGRR), established by Johnson earlier this year, the PM being another Brexiteer like Martin who also couldn't come up with a single EU law worth repealing.
In fact, Johnson created an entire career out of inventing non-existent EU rules on tea bags, coffins, condoms and all sort of things. This is why he set up TIGRR in the first place. Iain Duncan Smith heads up the 'task force' along with Theresa Villiers (NI secretary who didn't think Brexit would affect the Irish border) and George Freeman.
The TIGRR will no doubt soon be recommending the lifting of the EU ban on smoky bacon crisps (The Sunday Times, 4 May 2003, page 3) or perhaps the ban on mushy peas (Daily Telegraph, p3, 9 August 1995). And we will soon be able to measure land area in acres once more when that ridiculous EU directive is lifted (The Daily Telegraph, 21 July 2008, p1).
HGV drivers will be able to wear glasses again after the 'barmy' EU directive preventing them is repealed once and for all (Daily Star, 7 February 1996, pp2 & 8).
Martin says the TIGRR report was sent to Downing Street "last month" but there is nothing about it on the website and I haven't read about it in the press, so I'm not convinced Duncan Smith has come up with anything, yet. Martin appears to think their report will cover "finance and the City; use of data; speeding up clinical trials; digital health and use of health data post-Covid; nutraceuticals, where food meets medicine; agriculture and the environment; cannabinoids for medicinal use; satellites and space; and transport, on the boom to come in autonomous vehicle production, drones and e-scooters."
But if I turn to the actual IfG report published a few days ago, I find their web page announcing it begins with this:
"This report warns that an incoherent government approach to the UK’s post-Brexit regulatory freedoms risks creating new costs for businesses, harming its international trade ambitions and destabilising the union."
That was the very first paragraph.
The report itself, in the summary says:
Yet exercising the UK’s new autonomy will often come at a price. Diverging from the EU could trigger disputes under the UK–EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) that lead to a loss of access to EU markets for British firms, undermine the UK’s international obligations, make British exporters less competitive and upset already strained relations between Westminster and the devolved administrations. Critically, it also risks deepening trade barriers between Great Britain and Northern Ireland – the ‘Irish Sea border’ – a prospect opposed by many in the unionist community and could have sensitive political and economic consequences that the government must handle carefully.
And beyond the political rhetoric, there does not appear to be widespread public or political appetite to tear up EU rules in areas like workers’ rights and food safety, which are seen to offer strong protections, especially as many firms and policy makers are still adjusting to the huge changes arising from the end of the transition period. Given these potential consequences, the government should avoid divergence for its own sake. It must make a clear case for doing things differently, beyond simply wanting to demonstrate that it can."
Where I find myself agreeing with Martin is his assertion that "at some point opponents and voters will start asking when the Brexit dividend is going to turn up. So, what rules can be changed to make innovation easier in fast-growing industries? The aim should be a growth shock, a boost to economic activity and productivity that lifts the country in the next few decades."
Voters will soon be asking that question. What was the point of it all? All of the government's previous red tape challenges and initiatives (and since 2019 there has been a few) have come to grief when it comes to actually repealing anything. Regulations are there for a purpose.
As is well known, one task force charged with deregulating was scheduled to look at fire safety rules to see how they could be cut, on the morning of the Grenfell disaster which cost 72 lives.
It's OK speeding up clinical trials - until another thalidomide scandal comes along to blight thousands of lives. Who will take responsibility for that sort of thing? When ministers are faced with scrapping regulations that were put in place originally to prevent a tragedy the appetite for repeal will suddenly disappear.
But the question of what Brexit was for will remain - until we rejoin.
