Kemi Badenoch clashes with Brexiteers

Some vintage blue-on-blue today over at the European Scrutiny Committee (ESC). Kemi Badenoch, the Business and Trade Secretary, was up before MPs to face a grilling on her department’s Retained EU Law (REUL) bill. The legislation was introduced under Liz Truss when Jacob Rees-Mogg was Business Secretary, with the aim of removing all EU legislation from the UK by the end of 2023.

Badenoch though has championed a different approach: ditching the sunset element from the bill after it went through the House of Commons. Her department has instead provided parliament with a list of all REUL that the government intends to repeal. Some, like ESC chairman Bill Clash, have claimed this amounts to a ‘betrayal’ of Brexit. Her defence today was that:

I’m not an arsonist, I’m a Conservative. I don’t think a bonfire of regulations is what we wanted. What we wanted was reform and removal of the things we didn’t need.