2 yıl önce

Truss pledges to ditch all EU laws by 2023 amid UK leadership race

Liz Truss said she would not follow the “outdated EU law and frameworks” and will seize opportunities that the UK may have in the future.

Reuters

British Foreign Secretary and Conservative leadership candidate Liz Truss leaves her house in London, Britain, July 20, 2022.

Liz Truss, the leading candidate to succeed Boris Johnson as British prime minister, promised to scrap all remaining European Union laws that still apply in Britain by 2023 if she wins the Conservative Party leadership contest.

Foreign Secretary Truss is up against former finance minister Rishi Sunak in a race to court the 200,000 members of the Conservative Party who over the course of the summer will vote to choose the country's new prime minister.

Britain's relationship with Europe remains of great concern to the Conservative Party membership, generally characterised as more eurosceptic than the wider population.

Hoping to tap into that, Truss, who campaigned for 'remain' in the 2016 referendum but is now seen as the heir to Johnson's pro-Brexit position, promised to purge all remaining EU laws from the statute books.

To avoid uncertainty and confusion as Britain untangled itself from the EU after 40 years of membership, the government automatically carried over thousands of EU laws and regulations into British law so that they would still apply after Brexit.

"EU regulations hinder our businesses and this has to change," Truss said in a statement. The statement said she was setting out her credentials as the "Brexit delivery" prime minister.

"In Downing Street, I will seize the chance to diverge from outdated EU law and frameworks and capitalise on the opportunities we have ahead of us."

Sunak: UK faces national emergency on 'five fronts'

Separately, Rishi Sunak, in the running to become the next prime minister, would put the government on a crisis footing from "day one" of taking office, he said in an interview with The Times on Friday.

Over the next week, Sunak intends to argue that Britain is facing a national emergency on five fronts including the economy, the National Health Service and migration, the newspaper reported.

Inflation is the "number one challenge we face," Sunak told the newspaper, adding that under Truss' plans, interest rates in the country could rise significantly.

Sunak has said he plans to cut taxes but only once inflation — now running at almost 10 percent — is brought under control. He accused his rivals of making "fairy tale" promises about tax cuts.

The government has already set out its intention to replace or repeal existing EU laws but had not set a timeframe.

Truss's deadline of 2023 is earlier than a similar pledge made by Sunak, who campaigned for Brexit in 2016 but has been vilified by some corners of the Conservative Party for raising taxes to their highest level in decades.

Sunak said EU law would be scrapped or reformed by the next election, which is expected in 2024. Truss leads Sunak by 62 percent to 38 percent among Conservative Party members, according to a YouGov poll on Thursday.

SOURCE: Reuters