Bonfire of the standards

 Back in 2018, the talk from Brexiteers was not of reducing standards when we left the EU, but of improving on them. For instance, Michael Gove in evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee in July:

Gove told MPs that the opportunity for ministers to set different standards to those enforced by the bloc would “unquestionably” lead to tougher regulations being introduced, claiming that many “pro-leave” politicians took their stance in the 2016 referendum partly due to the appeal of setting stricter controls than the EU.

In February, Boris Johnson had said that "Britain may choose to remain aligned with European Union standards for some products to help trade after Brexit". I also have the distinct impression that the prime minister had aspired to build better on EU legislation once we were out of the Union. No doubt many wavering Conservatives had been persuaded to back Brexit on the basis of such hopes.

The Act made sure that EU regulations and standards would continue after Brexit. But that was all thrown up in the air in the Commons last Thursday. The newly-appointed Paymaster-General, Michael Ellis, stated:

First, we will conduct a review of so-called retained EU law; by this, I mean the many pieces of legislation that we took on to our own statute book through the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. We must now revisit this huge but anomalous category of law, and we have two purposes in mind. First, we intend to remove the special status of retained EU law so that it is no longer a distinct category of UK domestic law but is normalised within our law with a clear legislative status. Unless we do that, we risk giving undue precedence to laws derived from EU legislation over laws made properly by this Parliament. The review also involves ensuring that all courts in this country have the full ability to depart from EU case law according to the normal rules. In so doing, we will continue restoring this sovereign Parliament and our courts to their proper constitutional positions, and indeed finalise that process.

Our second goal is to review comprehensively the substantive content of retained EU law. Some of that is already under way—for example, our plans to reform Toggle showing location ofColumn 1149inherited procurement rules and the plan announced last autumn by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor to review much financial services legislation. But we will make this a comprehensive exercise, and I want to make it clear that our intention is eventually to amend, replace or repeal all retained EU law that is not right for the UK. That is a legislative problem, and accordingly the solution is also likely to be legislative. We will consider all the options for taking this forward, and in particular look at developing a tailored mechanism for accelerating the repeal or amendment of retained EU law in a way that reflects the fact that laws agreed elsewhere have intrinsically less democratic legitimacy than laws initiated by the Government of this country.

We also intend to begin a new series of reforms of the legislation we have inherited on EU exit, in many cases as recommended by the TIGRR report. Let me give some examples. We intend to create a pro-growth trusted data rights regime that is more proportionate and less burdensome than the EU’s GDPR—general data protection regulation.

On the last point, the government should be aware that weakening data protection may make exchanging data across the EU-UK border more difficult and thus inhibit some types of business.

Emily Thornberry for the Opposition posed key questions:

First, why do the Government believe that signing a veterinary agreement with the EU is incompatible with their ambitions to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership? Secondly, if the answer is that joining the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership requires them to diverge from EU standards in relation to food safety, which is the only logical explanation for the comments that Lord Frost has made, can the Paymaster General tell us which specific standards they plan to diverge from?

But answer came there none.

Now we learn that Johnson and Raab are intent on finally carrying out the threat initiated by Theresa May, to scrap all UK human rights legislation.