Brexit bill to scrap EU laws is scrapped?

Unelected civil servants deciding on which EU laws to be scrapped?  How "democratic"!  Brexit fundamentalists must be ecstatic.  Or maybe not -- the bill may never be passed.  

Then, it was a bill to scrap the parts of the trade agreement.  Now, it's a bill to scrap EU laws.  Brexit fundamentalists love to scrap things, don't they?  I wonder when they will start thinking about scrapping their own intransigence and fundamentalism. 

Tories in retreat from Brexit bill to scrap thousands of EU laws

Story by Toby Helm, Observer Political Editor • 2h ago



Excerpts:
Ministers have begun a full-scale retreat over post-Brexit plans to ditch thousands of EU laws by the end of this year, after Tory peers warned they would join a mass cross-party revolt in the House of Lords.

The Observer can reveal that the government has dropped plans to hold the report stage of the Brexiters’ retained EU law bill in the Lords soon after Easter, apparently to prevent a row in the run-up to the local elections on 4 May and to allow it time to consider a list of likely concessions to rebels.

While such a climbdown risks angering hardline Tory Brexiters, including the bill’s original champion, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the extent of opposition to it from business, environmental groups, unions and Brussels has left ministers with no option but to consider delay, and moving to a scaled-down and less hurried version.

No new dates have been set for the report stage and peers now believe the much-criticised bill could be put back by months and possibly beyond the next general election.

Under the bill’s provisions, more than 4,000 EU laws kept on the UK statute book after Brexit to ensure continuity would be automatically scrapped at the end of this year, unless ministers decide that there should be exemptions.

A key complaint is the way it would cut both houses of parliament out of decisions on which EU laws should be ditched, ceding that power to unelected civil servants and ministers. This is despite the fact that Rees-Mogg and his fellow Brexiters said that leaving the EU would be a way of restoring sovereignty to parliament.

While Tory and other peers are keen not to be seen to be conducting their arguments in public...another source in the Lords said: “The penny has dropped with No 10. There is a recognition that unless they make concessions they are in ‘baby out with the bathwater’ territory. They will be causing legal chaos on many fronts for the sake of pleasing Rees-Mogg and the Tory right.”

Concern has also been rising within government departments over the amount of civil service time that the bill has been taking and, more recently, the way the legal fallout could complicate Rishi Sunak’s recently signed Windsor framework deal with Brussels on the operation of the Northern Ireland protocol.

Senior figures in Brussels have also weighed in, saying that if environmental and other standards are allowed to fall in the UK, threatening the so-called “level playing field”, this could seriously undermine the UK’s post-Brexit trade deal with the EU and potentially lead to a trade war.

One idea understood to be under consideration is for Badenoch to announce in the coming months a list of obviously redundant EU laws that could be abolished without controversy and hail this symbolic move as proof that ministers were delivering on Brexit.

Another idea is to extend the “sunset clause” under which laws would cease to apply by at least another year, taking them beyond the likely date of the next general election, meaning the bill would in effect never come into force. Within the civil service, officials say it is inevitable that most of the EU laws will be retained.

Chaffed to bits. 

You like breaking laws, don't you? 

You like breaking laws, don't you? 

Not if they are sencible.....But then some of us have the ability to ignore lefy woke BS and stupid laws from the EUSSR.

Did the word sencible go over your head? But of course you fall for all this woke lefty BS as you have an excuse for a car and a heat pump..