Only a fraction of EU laws should be axed, says minister

A PROMISED bonfire of thousands of European Union laws might be scaled back to just a few hundred, a government minister has said.

George Freeman, the business minister, said that the Government might only get rid of a fraction of up to 4,000 EU laws that ministers have to keep or scrap by the end of the year.

A decision on whether to keep or drop the 4,000 pieces of legislation inherited from Brussels during the UK’S EU membership must be made this year under the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill.

The Bill includes an allowance for ministers to delay some of the sunsetting of the EU regulations until June 2026, the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum vote.

However, in comments that will alarm Eurosceptic Tories, Mr Freeman told the Chopper’s Politics podcast that officials should initially drop “the top 10 per cent of daft regulations that are holding us back” rather than trying to axe all superfluous EU rules at once.

The “targeted” approach was preferable to trying to remove thousands of EU laws, which would soak up a lot of parliamentary time. There were also reports this week that the House of Lords would frustrate the passage of the legislation to scrap the EU laws.

Mr Freeman described the drive to cut red tape as a “huge regulatory opportunity” and listed it as one of five reasons to be cheerful about 2023.

In the interview, Mr Freeman said: “When we left the EU, in order to have consistency and conformity on day one and not to create huge problems for UK business, we brought on all of the regulations that we were party to.

“The key now is to focus on the daft ones. Let’s get rid of the really daft ones that are holding us back and put in place the smart regs we need. I’d rather be more targeted than create a huge parliamentary process where we go through stripping the whole lot out, and instead focus on what will help drive growth.”

Asked how many laws might be axed, he suggested it could be as low as 400. “My instinct would be, let’s focus on the top 10 per cent of daft regulations that are holding us back. Get those done, then do the next 10 per cent.”