have estimated that Brexit has already added six per cent to food bills – a sharp reality check to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s confident prediction in 2017 that the cost of food and clothing would “come down significantly” once we were free of Brussels’ clutches.
As it happens, it was Rees-Mogg as “Brexit Opportunities Minister” who was first forced to delay the new border rules back in April 2022, admitting the cost of living crisis meant it was the wrong time to impose extra costs on business and consumers. Earlier this week, the Government also publicly, finally conceded that it would allow British business to use “indefinitely” the EU’s safety mark on goods, the “CE” stamp that reassures consumers. A rival UK safety mark will now quietly wither on the vine.plans for a “bonfire” of most retained EU lawsWhat unites each of these policy shifts is that business has been warning ministers against the huge and needless costs of undoing EU rules and then duplicating them with British alternatives.
There are other areas where the UK may have to effectively align with EU rules. A successor regime for the REACH regulations covering chemicals may well be also delayed amid fears from British manufacturers and environmentalists alike that ditching EU rules will be bad for jobs and for nature. Of course, the EU doesn’t stand still and is actually strengthening some of its regulations. And British firms are voting with their feet in some instances. When Brussels regulated to lower arsenic residues in baby foods, our manufacturers said they’d