Kemi’s mauling over EU red tape
She’s attacked by Tories who want European laws scrapped ...then Speaker chastises her amid bruising scenes in the Commons
KEMI Badenoch was mauled by Tory backbenchers yesterday after she rowed back on a pledge to scrap thousands of EU laws this year.
In bad-tempered exchanges in the Commons, Brexiteer MPs criticised the Business Secretary’s ‘massive climbdown’, asking ‘what on earth’ she was playing at.
Mrs Badenoch also clashed with Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle who was unhappy at the policy change appearing in a newspaper rather than being announced via an oral statement to the House by a minister.
Sir Lindsay snapped at her, asking: ‘Who do you think you’re speaking to?’ after Mrs Badenoch said she was sorry the sequencing of the announcement was not to the Speaker’s ‘satisfaction’.
Ministers had promised a bonfire of EU red tape, removing all Brussels regulations from the statute book by the end of the year.
But it has now been revealed that only a fraction of the estimated 5,000 EU laws will be removed by the deadline.
And last night Mrs Badenoch fanned the flames further, accusing her critics of making ‘a lot of noise’ but not ‘doing’. She told TalkTV: ‘I asked MPs who had been in that meeting what they wanted to remove and they couldn’t say anything. There are many people across Parliament, in the media, and in the commentariat who make a lot of noise but they’re not the ones who have to do the doing.’
In the Commons, Mrs Badenoch took responsibility for the decision but knives were also out for Rishi Sunak. Tory former business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, who had drawn up a list of laws to be dropped, accused the Prime Minister of ‘behaving like a Borgia’.
The Borgia were a wealthy family who were notorious during the Italian Renaissance for treachery, corruption and immorality.
He also said Mr Sunak was pretending to be ‘holier than thou’ by talking about the importance of telling the truth but failing to deliver on his pledge. Downing Street insisted Mr Sunak is a man of his word, and denied there was a risk of slippage caused by the lack of a hard deadline to repeal the legislation.
But MPs reacted furiously to the U-turn and called an urgent question in the Commons. Former minister Mark Francois insisted there had been a majority of Tory support for the Bill in the Commons.
He added: ‘Why, then, when it’s gone to the House of Lords, has the Government performed a massive climbdown on its own Bill despite having such strong support from its own backbenches? Secretary of State, what on earth are you playing at?’
Mrs Badenoch replied: ‘He should know that I am not somebody who gets pushed around lightly. The fact is I went in and looked at the detail and I decided this was the best way to deliver it. This was not, and I will stress again, this was not the Prime Minister’s decision.
‘As a Secretary of State I have to be responsible and look at what we can make sure is deliverable.’
Mr Rees-Mogg and Dominic Raab suggested ‘civil service idleness’ was to blame.
Former justice secretary Mr Raab urged Mrs Badenoch to ‘resist the resistance in Whitehall’ to the proposals. And Mr Rees-Mogg, who originally steered the Bill through the Commons, asked: ‘Will she explain whether this abdication to the House of Lords has come about because of civil service idleness or a lack of ministerial drive?’ A source close to Mrs Badenoch said that ‘nothing was briefed out overnight and a written ministerial statement was published and letters sent to colleagues and select committees at the same time yesterday’.
‘Kemi went to the European Research Group to discuss the proposals because she wanted to show respect, and someone at that
meeting chose to leak to the media,’ they added.
It comes as senior Tories have urged Mr Sunak to accelerate the Government’s flagship levelling up plans – or risk losing the next general election.
Conservative MPs in the ‘Red Wall’ – constituencies in the Midlands and North of England which the party won for the first time in 2019 – have asked the Prime Minister to fast-track the Levelling Up Bill through Parliament before summer.
The legislation would see extra cash and power being handed out to certain regions. But the Bill, first introduced over a year ago, has been held up in the Lords, with peers submitting 600 amendments which could see the legislation time out. A group of ten MPs concerned about their seats, led by Mansfield’s Ben Bradley, have now asked Mr Sunak to ensure the Bill is a ‘vital priority’.