Brexit freedoms

sir – Sherelle Jacobs says that pledges to scrap EU laws have been watered down (“Britain is now irrationally terrified of freedom. It should just rejoin the EU”, Comment, April 2). However, we have scrapped or reformed more than 2,000 EU laws and another 1,000 are on the way out. Meanwhile, the EU has created nearly 8,000 new regulations in that time.

Yes, I have paused our free-trade agreement negotiations with Canada, but that is a Brexit freedom. As Trade Secretary, I can do that if I do not believe a deal benefits the UK. If we were in the EU, the UK alone would never have been able to pause a trade agreement.

In any case, we have just ratified our accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Transpacific Partnership (CPTPP), a trade bloc that includes Canada, and will be home to half of the world’s 2.3 billion middle-class consumers by 2030. Members of the CPTPP, more so than the EU, will set the terms of international trade in the future. Britain is in there early to ensure we steer those terms. Another Brexit freedom.

People think Brexit isn’t working – and of course there is more to do – but I would encourage Ms Jacobs to read “Brexit: Fourth Anniversary”, which my department published this year. It compiles a list of statistics and successes comparing the UK with peer countries, and shows that Global Britain is thriving on the world stage.

Kemi Badenoch MP (Con) Business and Trade Secretary London SW1

sir – Having read Sherelle Jacobs’s article on our failure to take advantage of Brexit freedoms, I’d like to know what Reform UK has to say. As a Conservative Party member who has voted for it for almost 60 years, I am seriously thinking of changing my allegiance. We voted Brexit because we wanted to deregulate and get away from the EU’S red tape.

Janet Milliken Capel-le-ferne, Kent