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Kemi Badenoch clashes with Brexiteers

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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.

Not all Brexiteers were content with that, including the deputy chairman of the ESC David Jones:

What I’m finding difficult to understand is that when a bill passes through the House of Commons unamended and therefore has the complete approbation of the House of Commons, you then change your approach completely. You don’t tell the Commons that you’re changing your approach. You don’t have the courtesy to come before this committee so that this committee can scrutinise the changes that you’re proposing. And then you come back to the Commons, it having gone through the Lords, presenting the Commons effectively with a fait accompli. Don’t think that’s disrespectful of the House of Commons?

Badenoch in turn responded by referencing parliamentary process, noting that as ‘International Trade Secretary, I’m often not in the country’ and adding this riposte:

Something you’re not saying is that we had private meetings David, we had private meetings where we discussed this extensively because I knew you had concerns and it’s public knowledge that we had private meetings, because when I thought I was having private and confidential meetings, I was reading the contents in the Daily Telegraph so with respect I would like to dispute quite a lot of what you said.

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Steerpike
Written by
Steerpike

Steerpike is The Spectator's gossip columnist, serving up the latest tittle tattle from Westminster and beyond. Email tips to steerpike@spectator.co.uk or message @MrSteerpike

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