Ministers have published the list of 600 EU laws the government plans to scrap by the end of the year in a much-reduced Brussels “bonfire” that has enraged hardline Brexiters in the Conservative party.
In a significant retreat on its retained EU law bill, the government has slashed the number of environmental laws that would have automatically expired on 31 December from 1,700 to 341.
The list includes rules governing habitat regulations dating from 1996, covering saltmarshes and river fringes and orders relating to environmentally sensitive areas including places in the Broads, Pennine Dales, Somerset Levels and Moors, South Downs and West Penwith.
In explanatory notes the government says these rules are no longer operational or “no longer relevant to the UK”. The former diplomat Lord Kerr, who was behind the article 50 rule that allowed Brexit, said he believed most of nearly 600 laws to be revoked by the government in its published list are “defunct”, but said he agreed with peers across the House that parliamentary scrutiny was important. It is currently at report stage in the House of Lords.
A significant chunk of the repealed laws relates to fisheries, including sustainable fisheries partnership agreements with a wide range of countries from the Gambia to Seychelles. Other legislation relates to fish populations in the Black Sea and Mediterranean.
There is also a wide range of laws being repealed that relate to “biocidal products” such as disinfectants, wood preservatives and insect repellants. Among the chemicals listed are acrolein, indoxacarb and creosote.
Legislation that gave access to a valuable EU-wide criminal database, known as Ecris, has also formally been torn up. Ecris holds conviction information on third-country nationals and stateless people. However, by leaving the EU, the UK automatically lost access to Ecris, and the repeal will be seen as a formality.
On Monday night, in a further government defeat, peers backed by 142 votes to 132 a provision to ensure ministerial powers to revoke, replace or update retained EU law do not undermine current environmental protections or food safety standards.
The government has narrowly seen off a move to add procedural protections of workers’ rights by a majority of one.
The bill has reopened old Brexit divisions with accusations of a sellout by Rishi Sunak from the likes of Bill Cash and Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Rees-Mogg branded the decision to scale back the list of laws to go from 5,000 to 600 as “pathetically underambitious”.
“Rishi Sunak made a specific promise to scrap thousands of EU laws,” the Tory MP for North East Somerset said at the National Conservatism conference on Monday. “He’s broken that promise. This is very unfortunate as one of his virtues is his trustworthiness and the surrender to the blob risks exposing the government to ridicule.”
But legal experts and opponents said the bill was “reckless” and “irresponsible” in sweeping aside the “interpretive effect” of EU law, and through its granting of unprecedented powers to allow ministers to decide which laws should go without full parliamentary scrutiny.
On Monday peers including more than a dozen Conservatives voted to amend the bill to include a requirement that any laws going through the shredder go before a joint committee in both Houses of Parliament with a debate and vote.
Campaigners will be going through the new list line by line for loopholes with environmental and workers’ unions who have condemned the act.
Other rules to be chopped, according to the government list, include:
Membership of the Council of Europe convention on an integrated safety, security and service approach at football matches and other sports events.
A “control programme” designed to ensure compliance with maximum residue levels of pesticides and to assess consumer exposure to pesticide residues in and on food of plant and animal origin.
A directive related to measures credit and financial institutions must take to mitigate money laundering and terrorist financing risk in certain third countries.
Regulation relating to sectors and subsectors that are deemed to be exposed to a significant risk of carbon leakage.
Rules relating to a countryside stewardship scheme and flood risk regulations from 2009, which the government says in explanatory notes “have been superseded by UK legislation or is a duplicate of existing domestic legislation”.
Tax agreements with the Channel Islands and Caribbean countries including the Virgin Islands and Aruba.
Only 10% of the 714 transport laws that appeared on the government’s original dashboard are set for the chop, including temporary legislation on lorry drivers’ hours.
The government will probably be questioned on its reasons for removing some asylum procedures which it says “are inoperable”.
