Rishi Sunak orders Cabinet to speed up scrapping thousands of inherited EU laws

RISHI Sunak cracked the whip as he today ordered his Cabinet to speed up scrapping over 4,000 inherited EU laws by the end of the year.

The Government’s Retained EU Law Bill will be returning to the Commons tomorrow, with MPs to debate “sunsetting” all unnecessary Brussels red tape.

The huge scale of the task has led some departments, said to include Trade, Transport and Environment, to push for extensions to 2028.

But ministers have been told to identify which laws they want to keep in the coming weeks.

The rest will automatically fall off the statute book at the end of this year.

Mr Sunak told ministers a leaner “regulatory environment in the UK will be crucial to accelerating our economic recovery and driving growth, innovation, and competitiveness as part of plans to build a better future across the country.”

Rules around gene editing to help farmers grow more resistant and productive crops were highlighted.

Reducing regulations on insurance firms investing funds in the UK was also pointed out.

But the PM warned “none of this work was about watering down standards, such as our strong record on workers’ rights, maternity rights, or environmental protection, having raised domestic standards over recent years to make them some of the highest in the world.”

The process of identifying useless Brussels red tape was first launched by ex-minister Jacob Rees-Mogg - who urged Sun readers to help him in his mission to flag hindering laws.