TRADE minister Kemi Badenoch has defended the UK Government’s decision to ditch plans to automatically scrap swathes of EU laws by the end of the year. 

In a stinging attack on some of her Conservative colleagues, including her predecessor Jacob Rees-Mogg, she also accused Brexiteers of talking and not doing.

The minister also denied that the government had been forced into a u-turn, despite Rishi Sunak promising to “sunset” all retained EU laws during last year’s Tory leadership contest. 

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Under the UK Government’s initial plans, officials had until the end of this year to go through and either revise, replace or revoke at least 4,800 pieces of legislation carried over from the UK’s 47-year membership of the bloc.

The scale of the task meant there were fears that a number of regulations in key areas could end up being lost entirely purely because ministers and the civil service ran out of time. 

Government data shows that only 906 EU laws have been dealt with so far, and of those, just 245 of those have been repealed.

Speaking to TalkTV, Ms Badenoch said the Brexit rebels on the Tory benches were good at making “a lot of noise” but that they were “not the ones who have to do the doing”.

The minister said she had challenged Brexiteers in a private meeting to tell her which laws they wanted to be scrapped and they had not given her a convincing answer.

“I asked MPs who had been in that meeting what they wanted to remove, and they couldn’t say anything,” she said. “I think that is more illustrative of the problem we have — that there are too many people who spend a lot of time talking. I need to do the thinking and the doing.”

In a reference to Mr Sunak’s pledge to “shred” EU law in a campaign video, Ms Badenoch said that it was an example of “where you campaign in poetry and govern in prose”.

She added: “I did a lot of software coding in my previous career. And I also have a law degree. You don’t just delete things from the statute. Actually, legislative processes such as this are quite complicated and technical. What I’ve done is change the approach and I think that it’s the right thing for the legislative programme that we have and for the country.”

The new plans see the government scrap about 550 pieces of legislation while just under 3,000 laws would remain in place to be reformed or scrapped at a later date.

In the Commons, Mark Francois, the chairman of the Brexiteer European Research Group said the government had “performed a massive climbdown.” 

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Earlier in the day, Ms Badenoch had earlier been rebuked by the Commons speaker for not making a statement in the Commons. 

Sir Lindsay Hoyle told Badenoch that “given the importance” of the announcement “full engagement with parliament is essential”.

Ms Badenoch replied that she was “very sorry that the sequencing that we chose was not to your satisfaction.” 

That infuriated the Speaker, who described her remarks as “totally not acceptable”.

“I am the defender of this House and these benches on both sides,” he said. “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.

“These members have been elected by their constituents and they have the right to hear it first and it is time this government recognised we’re all elected, we’re all members of parliament and used the correct manners.”