One of the big issues in the Brexit discussion is the number of European Rules – and the number affecting small businesses in particular. I decided to do a check today on the rules in the middle of being created.
Lets start with the Bills. Bills are the highest level of legislation – they get discussed several times in both houses of parliament before becoming law. They often will allow ministers to pass lower level legislation like regulations without discussing them in parliament. So start with what was discussed in parliament today. There were 24 at various stages. None of them had a European origin – all were “Made in Britain”. Eight come from Christopher Chope et al. From what I can tell 7 will affect small business in some way, and two will affect schools.
Next there are treaties becoming law (just because a minister signs a treaty doesn’t make it law in the UK – it has to be cleared in parliament). There are three due in the next two weeks. Two are UK treaties with other countries, one of which will affect small business. The third treaty is a European treaty that allows Switzerland to take part in the new European GPS system.
The bulk of legislation is made in statutory instruments (regulations, orders etc). There are two normal ways for these to go through parliament, negative and positive resolution. The negative is easier than positive in theory, but in reality most SIs get through either way.
There are 10 SIs due to complete their time over the next two weeks subject to negative resolution. 7 out of the 10 are Made in Britain, 1 of them looks like it will affect small business. Of the 3 European based SIs they are all related to international sanctions that the UK would probably put in place anyway.
With positive resolution the easiest way to review these is to look at the numbers passed in the last week. There were 10 passed in the last week, 3 of which affect small business. All were “Made in Britain”.
So in summary there were 47 pieces of legislation that I reviewed that were relevant to today in parliament, 4 of which came from Europe. The 15 pieces of legislation that have particular relevance to small business are all “Made in Britain”.
And while today was a private members bill day (so it was a bit different to other days) I did look back at business this week and it was no significant difference). The evidence suggests that the complaints about too much European legislation isn’t really based on fact – actually it’s the folks in Westminster that seem to be smothering us – and particularly the small businesses.