John Longworth has greeted the Repeal Bill with an article in The Telegraph (HERE) telling us the ten areas he would like to see changed once we leave the EU. As usual it is full of complete and laughable nonsense. He also, rightly in my opinion, thinks we might negotiate away our ability to deregulate. I am convinced this will happen. The EU is not going to allow us access to their market selling cheap goods or raw materials we have imported from non EU states or even ones we've made ourselves using inferior regulations. This will never happen.
But let’s have a look at what he thinks are the top priorities.
1. Deregulation of tariffs. He thinks we should drop tariffs for clothes, footwear and food to save consumers money, 40% he says on food alone. How farmers like Julian Sturdy will react I don’t know. The prospect of going out of business may not appeal to Mr Sturdy and thousands of other farmers but I might be wrong.
2. Lower class vegetables. He thinks the EU classification system is wrong. It will be interesting to see if this ever comes about. Farmers who want to export to the EU will have to keep the rules while presumably all the misshapen stuff will be for second class UK customers. How long will this last? Has any farmer been forced to throw badly shaped veg away? Or are they simply sold as class 2? Is this really a problem anyway?
3. Common sense chairs. He bangs on about the ergonomics directive but as far as I can see this was never implemented and was shelved in 2013 (HERE)
4. Bad smells. He thinks flavour and fragrance producers are required by EU rules to produce huge dossiers making them uncompetitive on world markets. I don’t know if this is true or not or what the suppliers actually think about it. But if they want to supply the EU the dossier will be required anyway. Cutting yourself off from the richest and most sophisticated market in the world does not seem a good idea to me.
5. Work/life balance. He thinks the EU agency workers directive has forced many people onto zero hour contracts. Again, I don’t know if this is true or not but I do not believe the recent Taylor report, or indeed any other report, has ever suggested this link.
6. Ladder to success. He laughably thinks EU Working at Height regulations have put builders out of business. This hardly seems likely since it applies to all builders. I know for sure that UK regulators apply these rules ridiculously harshly while in Europe they apply common sense. It is the UK which has created this problem not the EU.
7. Destroying overtime. The Working Time Directive has stopped people working overtime he says. What it has done is prevent people being forced to work overtime. Those who want to do overtime can opt out of it. It did not an issue one hears of as being a huge problem.
8. Medical negligence. Longworth thinks the EU has prevented medical research going into treatments but again I never hear of this from the BMA or indeed any clinical authority. He may be talking about the precautionary principle again (see below) which would have prevented the Thalidomide disaster for instance. Is it a bad thing? Drug companies shouldn't be able to offer things without being absolutely sure about safety.
9. Written risk assessments. For some reason he believes there is some EU directive or regulation requiring written risk assessments. I do not know this is true at all. I have worked for French and Italian companies and they don’t produce written risk assessments for everything and I never heard a complaint.
10. The precautionary principle. I don’t know if this is that same as medical negligence but it refers to being sure you are doing no harm before putting something on the market. He thinks this is stopping GM crops and Fracking. I am not sure either of these points is true but I think many people will be opposed to what The Daily Mail used to refer to as Frankenstein food. Even the Brexiteers aren't sure what they want.
He says if you go to Brussels you see workmen working on the pavement cutting slabs without safety glasses or hearing protection and climbing scaffolding without kicker boards in place. He thinks they are ignoring rules but I think there are no such rules from the EU. It is the UK gold plating and jobsworth pursuit of them that is the problem. This will get worse after we leave not better.
Longworth thinks the EU rules are making us uncompetitive but this is precisely why having EU wide rules is a good thing in the first place. It stops a race to the bottom. If we want to burden ourselves we can do it but let's not blame the EU.
There is a Red Tape Initiative (RTI) body run be Oliver Letwin who have been looking for "quick wins" on legislation that can be changed (HERE). In other words they are doing what Longworth suggests. What have they proposed? One would think they would have covered at least some of Longworth's priorities. But no, the website Politico say:
The RTI recommended changes to public procurement procedures for housing associations; an amendment to EU state aid rules, which applies to small building firms; and an amendment to the EU’s mortgage credit directive that would allow house-builders to give discounts to buyers without having to be registered with the Financial Conduct Authority.
And these are apparently quick wins! The Telegraph wheel out Longworth regularly for this kind of stuff and I think both they and he think he is an expert. He isn’t. Just an idiot.
