My response to constituents who contacted me on the Retained EU Law Bill:

Thank you for contacting me the Retained EU Law Bill.

As you may know, this Bill will allow Ministers to amend or repeal all legislation carried over from our membership of the European Union – thought to consist of over 2400 pieces of law – with nearly no parliamentary scrutiny. If the Government do not pass a replacement to any of piece of legislation before the end of this year, it would expire and no longer be law in our country. This puts at risk hard-fought rights and protections for British workers, consumers and environment while diminishing democratic scrutiny and accountability in key areas of British law.

In your email, you asked for me to support Amendment 36 to the Bill in the name of Stella Creasy MP. I was very pleased to support this amendment and my Labour colleagues tried to push through a similar one during Committee Stage. It is completely unacceptable that the Government want the power to potentially allow thousands of pieces of legislation to be removed from our statute book at the end of this year and we have no idea the exact list f legislation it would apply to.

More broadly, I am completely opposed to this Bill. The Conservatives’ reckless approach has crashed our economy leaving working people to pay the price. We cannot allow them to apply the same recklessness to our laws. This Bill would cause enormous levels of uncertainty as we would have no idea what our laws will consist of in 12 months’ time. It is clear that the Government want to use this Bill to embark on a process of mass deregulation. The laws at risk aren’t cumbersome red tape but rights and protections British people rightly expect.

That is why, along with my Labour colleagues, I voted against the Bill and will continue to oppose it.

We do need to establish the future status of laws carried over from out time in the European Union but I fundamentally disagree with the Government’s approach to doing this, seeking to give themselves the power to sweep away key areas of law, of great importance to people across the country, with no scrutiny, no say and no certainty over their replacements.

Instead, the Government should bring forward a positive set of proposals about where the law needs to change or whether something can be done better and allow MPs the time and power to scrutinise those proposals on behalf of our constituents.