Kemi Badenoch has come under fire from furious Conservative backbenchers, the opposition and the Commons speaker after defending the government’s U-turn on retained EU laws. The business secretary was challenged by leading Brexiters including Bill Cash and Mark Francois, chair of the Tory Brexiter European Research Group (ERG), who asked why the government had performed “a massive climbdown on its own bill despite having such strong support from its backbenchers”. “What on earth are you playing at?” he asked Badenoch, after her department last night ditched a promise to automatically scrap up to 4,000 EU-era regulations by by 31 December.
The architect of that “sunset clause” deadline, the former minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, accused Rishi Sunak of breaking his word over the change in plans, which were already facing obstacles from peers opposed to that cut-off date. “Will she explain whether this abdication to the House of Lords has come about because of civil service idleness or a lack of ministerial drive?” asked Rees-Mogg in the Commons as Badenoch appeared to answer an urgent question on the plans. Badenoch, who said it was she and not Sunak who had decided to revoke about 600 retained EU laws, rather than the 4,000 pledged, replied: “No, I don’t think it has come out of any idleness. If anything, I would say the civil servants have been working feverishly on this.” The Commons speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, criticised Badenoch’s decision to announce the changes in an article in the Telegraph and in a written ministerial statement rather than in person to MPs.
Badenoch said she was sorry the sequencing of the announcement was “not to your satisfaction”, prompting a furious reaction from Hoyle, who said: “That is totally not acceptable.” Following an off-microphone remark from Badenoch in which she appeared to be saying she should have said “not the right procedure”, the speaker said: “Who do you think you’re speaking to, secretary of state? I think we need to understand each other. “I am the defender of this house and these benches on both sides. I am not going to be spoken to by a secretary of state who is absolutely not accepting my ruling. Take it with good grace and accept it, that members should hear it first, not a WMS [written ministerial statement] or what you decide.” Badenoch, a former Tory leadership hopeful who is thought to still harbour ambitions for the top job, also saw her Brexiter credentials take a pounding in the past 48 hours. She defended the amendment to the retained EU law (revocation and reform) bill, saying: “If we delete the laws from the statute book we will be starting from scratch in terms of bringing in the reforming primary legislation. This is a better approach. “It was my suggestion to the prime minister, I’m very pleased that he accepted it and I am very proud to be standing here at the dispatch box showing that those of us who are Brexiteers can be pragmatic and do what is right for the British people.” Campaigners and opposition politicians, meanwhile, were working to identify whether they should be immediately concerned about any of the EU laws included in a list, published on Wednesday night, which the government intends to revoke. More than half – more than 300 – relate to the environment. Greener UK, a coalition of environmental groups including the RSPB, National Trust and Friends of the Earth, called on the government to remove at least two of the laws due to be chopped – relating to water and air quality. The group said there was a strong chance that new post-Brexit UK laws, intended to replace EU-era rules on environmental impact assessments (EIAs) for water resources, were still being consulted and would not be in place before spring next year. On air quality, it said the deletion list should not include regulations from 2018 as that would result in the scrapping of government obligations to prepare and implement its national air pollution control programme. The programme sets out how Britain can meet emissions reduction commitments concerning pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and ammonia. “It will take a significant amount of time to get to the bottom of all the detail and yet the government still wants to rush the bill on to the statute book in a matter of weeks,” said Ruth Chambers of Greener UK. The shadow business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said: “The utter chaos of the Conservatives has left business, workers and consumers none the wiser about which legislation the government intends to cherrypick from EU law.”