Lord Hannan lists the five tasty lumps Leave voters can enjoy two years on from Brexit – Daily Express

'The Benefits of Brexit: How the UK is taking advantage of leaving the EU' was published on Monday to mark the second anniversary of Britain's divorce from Brussels. It aimed to detail a plan for what European Union-made laws will be kept or scrapped, including ambitions to save 1billion for businesses by cutting inherited EU red tape. The 102-page document from the Cabinet Office also details a five-step approach to forging new post-Brexit, UK-specific regulations, vowing to use "our new freedom to act quickly and nimbly" in an attempt to create "better markets".

Other changes proposed in a bid to save billions of pounds for British businesses include making trade documents digital and streamlining procurement rules

Conservative peer Lord Hannan, who was an MEP for more than 20 years from 1999 to 2020 and is currently President of the Initiative for Free Trade, has picked out some of the positives from the huge document.

He wrote in an article for the Conservative Home website: "There are tasty lumps here and there.

"Replacing the Common Agricultural Policy with a subsidy regime that rewards rural stewardship rather than food production is in the interests of farmers, consumers and the countryside.

"Taking back control over our fishing grounds is likewise in the interests of both fishermen and fish.

"Weve tapped some irritating pebbles from our shoes the tampon tax, EU passports, restrictions on Imperial measures."

But overall, he described most of the gains listed in the paper as "aspirational", branding the document "100 pages of civil servantese".

He said some of the "gains" listed include a "new regulatory regime, a new agency or a new subsidy mechanism", adding: "The idea that leaving the EU might mean fewer regulations a major theme of Vote Leave, which went into granular detail in its million-word manifesto Change or Go, has been forgotten."

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In conclusion, Lord Hannan wrote: "We paid a high price during the exit negotiations for the right to diverge from EU standards.

"I was one of those who argued for moderation for accepting a Swiss-type deal so as to avoid many of the rows we went on to face over Northern Ireland.

"I lost that argument and we went for absolute regulatory freedom.

"OK, fine: Im happy to get with the programme. But it is idiotic to pay that price and then not use the freedoms it bought.

"There was recently a time when almost every Conservative MP understood that. Where have they all gone?"

In his foreword to the Brexit report, Mr Johnson said the Government plans on "firmly planting the British flag on the world stage once again".

The Prime Minister said the "bolder" the UK is in targeting opportunities afforded by leaving the EU, the "greater the gains will be for us all".

He claimed Britain's departure from the bloc on January 1, 2020 marked "not the final page of the story, but the start of a whole new chapter".

Mr Johnson also predicted a "future in which we don't sit passively outside the European Union but seize the incredible opportunities that our freedom presents and use them to build back better than ever before - making our businesses more competitive and our people more prosperous".

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Lord Hannan lists the five tasty lumps Leave voters can enjoy two years on from Brexit - Daily Express