Business for Britain was right, on 2nd March, to question the proportion of our laws that comes from Brussels. Nigel Farage says it is 78%, Nick Clegg 7% and the House of Commons Library 13.2% but that is also an understatement due to the Library’s omission of no less than 49,699 EU Regulations, during the same 21 years to 2014. EU Regulations are not approved by Parliament and thereby escape the Library’s attention. From that, Business for Britain concluded that 65.7% of our legislation comes from Brussels. The figures, in fact, get murkier because the Library also seems to have omitted up to 2,000 statutory instruments a year, which would offset most of the swing. SIs are the UK equivalents of EU regulations: both are secondary or “delegated” legislation and cover a broad range of rules from laws in the full sense to temporary road closures. SIs can even be used to repeal primary legislation.
The proportion from Brussels is really beside the point, namely the total number of rules both from Brussels and Whitehall. Governments claim they will staunch the flow but little is done. Surely by now we must have enough laws?
Curiously, so far as business regulation is concerned, Whitehall is the bigger offender. In 1972 we signed up to a Common Market. That is the one bit of the EU we all like and let us hope that, and not much else, survives the EU renegotiation. A single market must have a single set of rules governing that market. You cannot have a single market if everyone makes their own. The market-maker is the EU and it is no more a loss of sovereignty to conform to their rules than, say, playing by the club’s rules when one joins a poker club. Sovereignty is being able to opt out.
Business, like poker, is competitive so it is crazy to add ones own rules, hobbling one’s own business, to those required by the club. Telling the others at the table that you will never raise on, say, two pairs, stacks the odds against you. For this reason, counter-intuitively, it would be best if 100% of business regulation came from Brussels.
If a regulation is needed in the UK then we should ensure Brussels adopts it for the rest of the single market. If the others think it is unnecessary, we should think again. Rather than dreaming up its own business regulations, Whitehall should be staunching the 4,000 a year flow from Brussels and ensure that what does get through will deliver the open, fair and competitive single market we need.
Not only can we ditch all UK business regulations not required by the EU, but, with all that new free time at their disposal, our civil servants can be out and about in the capitals of Europe developing best practice, closer working relationships and, in consequence the simplest and best set of rules. In this game, fewer is better as anyone who witnessed the FSA contribution to the banking crisis can testify. Indeed, they will not need desk space in Whitehall, probably the most expensive in Europe, any longer.
There is little truth in widespread view that we must accept EU legislation without demur, beyond fine tuning directive-based legislation a bit. The European Scrutiny Committee of MPs “assesses the legal/political importance of EU documents, deciding which are debated, monitoring the activities of UK Ministers in the Council and keeping developments in the EU under review.” In other words, it is supposed to be briefed with EU Regulations in draft and seek to amend those not in the UK interest. How often does it do that? Hardly ever is probably a generous estimate. When that doughty EU fighter, Sir William Cash, became chairman, some of us hoped for action, but no, he was overcome by the same torpor as overwhelmed his predecessors.
In short, Business for Britain are right to complaint about the excess of regulation from Brussels but we should complain even louder about the excess from Whitehall and Parliament’s spineless defence of British business.