Seven years after the referendum (I remember that night like it was yesterday) we are beginning to see the death throws of Brexit through the prism of the much-vaunted REUL Bill to repeal, amend or replace Retained EU law. I say this after watching the European Scrutiny Committee meeting on Tuesday when Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch finally managed to appear in front of them on the vexed issue of the bill. It was like a cat in front of a box of frogs, and swivel-eyed frogs at that. Badenoch is not entirely stupid, something you really can’t say about the committee chair Cash or his Tory members like Richard Drax (South Dorset), David Jones (Clwyd) and Greg Smith (Buckingham).
The Labour members - and quite a few Tories - seemed mainly absent for reasons unknown. All the grilling came from her own side.
Badenoch clashed with David Jones, a small-time Welsh solicitor, who appeared to have difficulty understanding how parliament works even though he’s been there since 2005. He was incensed that Badenoch had offered concessions, particularly on the sunset clause, in response to some Lord's suggestions. The bill had gone through the Commons unamended and therefore peers had no right to demand changes. At least that was his position as I understood it.
One wonders what Jones thinks the upper chamber is for in a bi-cameral parliament if not to revise legislation. What Badenoch argued was at least logical in avoiding a disastrous cliff edge in December even though she still thinks Brexit is a good idea.
Jones wanted to know why Badenoch hadn’t made use of Section 8 of the EU Withdrawal Act 2018, the route by which Retained EU laws that have already gone were repealed, a point I confess which had puzzled me. Why did we need the REUL Bill at all?
The civil servants flanking the Trade Secretary explained it was because that power had expired at the end of 2022. I checked and see that paragraph 8 says:
“No regulations may be made under this section after the end of the period of two years beginning with exit day.”
The power actually ended on 31 January 2022, since exit day was 31 January 2020. This is what Jones (I assume) - a solicitor no less, had voted for! He clearly didn't know the law. Ms Badenoch pointed out she hadn’t been appointed until February 2023 and he should put that point to Jacob Rees-Mogg but he wasn't appointed until September 2022, replacing Alok Sharma who must shoulder the blame.
None of the Tory members thought the 587 EU rules which have so far been repealed were worth anything, mainly because they weren’t. Just five were what they thought 'substantive' although which ones they were was not revealed. The vast majority of these 582 EU rules, could have been repealed by the EU or had no effect on Britain at all.
To a man, they (and Badenoch) still cling to the increasingly discredited idea that our problems are solvable if only we jettison EU rules. None of them suggested which rules they might be, even after seven years of thinking and talking about it.
What they really wanted from the trade secretary was a list of “substantive” EU rules that were going to be swept away. This is almost certainly not going to happen, because we live in a highly regulated world and at best they might get some insignificant changes next year to a small number of EU laws.
The business secretary admitted they were consulting stakeholders - including SMEs - so don't expect any great scrapping of regulations.
We got a flavour of what is to come from Badenoch who talked about modest changes to wine labelling, fiddling with what employers are required to record for the Working Time Directive or simplifying the way holiday pay is calculated. It was hardly the stuff to stir the blood of Brexiteers, certainly not the loonies on the ESC.
She seemed to think this would give Britain a ‘competitive advantage’ - which makes me a bit concerned about how well the Business and Trade Secretary understands UK (or indeed any) business and industry.
Badenoch was clear that not all EU law would be thrown on the bonfire, not at all what the committee wanted to hear. Some would be retained and this led to a bizarre exchange with Greg Smith.
He wanted to know, if it was decided after this consultation and a careful analysis by civil servants plus a final ministerial decision, an EU law was to be retained, how the ES committee could scrutinise the process to find out WHY that particular piece of legislation could not be ditched.
Smith seemed to imply they needed an impact assessment of every EU law that might be retained permanently to convince the committee that every effort had been made to scrap it and only those deemed absolutely essential would be allowed to stain the UK statute book. It's madness.
Richard Drax - or to give him his full ridiculous name, Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, MP for South Dorset and whose huge family wealth came from slaves and a Caribbean sugar plantation, was sure we hadn’t left the EU at all, given the position in Northern Ireland. He sees conspiracy everywhere and is suspicious that the watering down of the REUL bill was a quid-pro-quo for the Windsor Framework. Badenoch denied it.
There was some pragmatism on her part in that (a) not all EU law was bad and (b) the UK often gold-plated things, which in my opinion is the first sign of reality finally penetrating the cabinet room.
Gavin Robinson (DUP) gets the prize for asking the longest, most convoluted and surreal questions which Badenoch had difficulty even understanding, let alone answering. He sometimes needed several attempts to explain what he was driving at, asking about transparency and what efforts had been made to examine the impact of revoking each EU law on the UK internal market. He was clearly worried about creating new barriers between GB and NI where all the old EU laws are to be retained.
A couple of points came over that I think give an insight into this whole process. Ms Badenoch asked if the committee really wanted a list of EU laws the government was minded to keep being published 'at this point in the election cycle.’ I assume she thought such a list would provoke a massive row in their own ranks - which I think is true. It's still a tremendously divisive issue in the Tory party.
Another point was about how many EU laws UK ministers voted for although they didn’t actually want them but simply ‘went along’ to appear good EU members. Cash claimed his committee had some giant repository of debates that took place in the UK that the Business Department was welcome to go through to weed out even EU laws that we publicly supported but secretly didn't want. Presumably, Cash would like to force burning matchsticks down the fingernails of all living (and past) former cabinet ministers to find out what they were actually thinking when the votes in the EU Council were cast.
And at the very end, Cash suggested Badenoch might think about appointing a Brexit Tsar to oversee the process like some sort of witchfinder general to keep civil servants on their toes. She was happy to do it. You have been warned.
