Prime minister Boris Johnson has said this week that his plans for a “Brexit Freedoms Bill” will help overhaul EU-era regulations that are still active in the UK and entice foreign investment.
As part of legislation underlining the terms of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, some of the bloc’s laws that the UK has chosen to keep in place hold unique legal status and there is a lengthier process for making changes to them. Under Johnson’s plans, it will become easier and less time consuming to amend or remove these.
Johnson said that the plans would allow for the UK to set its own rules that will cater for the “cutting-edge technologies of the future” and stimulate economic growth.
Since the UK left the European Union in January 2020, the country has distanced itself from many EU regulations, including on immigration, subsidies to farmers, and government support for businesses.
Other changes that the UK has made include moving away from EU rules on alcohol duties from 2023 and scrapping the bloc’s mandatory five per cent VAT rate on sanitary products such as tampons.
While the UK continued to abide by EU rules for the year-long transition period, which spanned January 2020 to January 2021, the government has been weighing up which EU rules it could keep in place and which to abolish or change since September last year.
The PM has been pressed by Brexiteers within the Conservative party to diverge further from EU law, and Johnson is now eyeing up changes which will enable the UK to set new regulations in fields such as technology and artificial intelligence.
The prime minister’s move comes after Lord Frost, the former Brexit minister, resigned in late 2021 over the “current direction of travel”, saying that the nation needed to capitalise on the opportunities Brexit provided more than it was doing.
Speaking on Monday, two years to the day since the UK left the EU, Johnson said: “There are things that we can do differently in a way that will encourage business to invest even more.
“We won't diverge for the sake of it, but we're going to make sure this is the number one place to invest and do business because of freedoms that we have.”
However, there has been concern over the Bill within the devolved administrations, with the Scottish and Welsh governments arguing that devolution could be undermined by the move.
Meanwhile in Northern Ireland, talks around making changes to the application of the Northern Ireland Protocol are still ongoing.
Northern Ireland remains inside the EU single market for goods, meaning many of the bloc’s rules still apply in the region.
The UK government has said that it will “continue to work closely with the devolved administrations” moving forward as it looks to set its own rules.
Elsewhere, the Labour party has criticised the government for not using Brexit opportunities to axe the EU-mandated five per cent VAT on energy bills, amid the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
Photo taken from Wikimedia Commons
