With Westminster shrouded in mourning, under the surface a quiet bonfire of legislation is smouldering. New cabinet ministers have already taken the axe to a list of forthcoming legislation – and the guillotine is hovering above others.
Over the past week, Liz Truss has indicated the end of the bill of rights, the obesity strategy and the cap on bankers’ bonuses, with rumours about the demise of gambling reform, the animal welfare bill and the online harms bill.
The latest confirmed for the chop is the energy bill, which Jacob Rees-Mogg told officials in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to halt any work on while the government revisited its priorities.
The bill contains reforms to bolster Britain’s domestic energy supplies, but sources say the government is instead prioritising work on a framework for decoupling electricity prices from global gas prices and “locational pricing”, which could bring down costs.
All of these legislative changes fit a pattern, culturally and economically. First, Truss and the new chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, have told ministers to focus efforts on legislation that promotes growth, meaning anything that may lead to further regulation is coming under the spotlight.
Second, there is a pressing need to ensure Truss throws enough red meat to Tory backbenchers with tax cuts and a war on the nanny state, enough to make her critics set aside their fears that she has just announced an additional £150bn of spending to help tackle the energy crisis – the biggest expansion of state support in postwar times.
A cabinet minister said there was also a question of priorities: “There are so many things that have to be done, it squeezes how much genuine flexibility we might have.”
Some of the shredding is also part of deals done during the leadership campaign. At her first cabinet meeting, Truss said the government was putting on pause the forthcoming bill of rights, the pet project of the ousted justice secretary Dominic Raab. Robert Buckland, who switched sides to back Truss during the campaign, had made it a key demand.
Buckland, who held the post before Raab, had correctly identified that the bill contained a multitude of problems and made little difference to solving the government’s problem of how to legally send refugees to Rwanda.
Cynically, it gave the Conservatives ownership of the laws around “human rights” appeals, rather than being able to blame the previous Labour government. The obvious question is whether Truss is prepared to go further and do what the bill did not – leave the European Convention on Human Rights.
Next on the chopping block is the obesity strategy – an official review of measures designed to deter people from eating junk food, which could mean lifting the ban on sugary products being displayed at checkouts and on advertising certain products on TV before the 9pm watershed.
One former minister said: “I would put these in the category of culture wars, not policymaking. It’s not serious, thoughtful changes. It’s all tone-setting for the election. But these things can cause a huge amount of damage in the process.”
Truss has long been a deep sceptic of public health interventions such as the strategy – setting tongues wagging as early as 2018 when she accused her “macho” male colleagues of interfering too much in people’s lives.
“Government’s role should not be to tell us what our tastes should be,” she said. “Too often we’re hearing about not drinking too much, eating too many doughnuts.”
Other regulation for the chop includes a plan by Kwarteng to lift the cap on bankers’ bonuses – a move that would seem to be a far cry from populist politics.
But it fits the theme, a gamble that voters will reward the Conservatives for economic growth and be prepared to overlook some small unpopular measures. That is certainly a big gamble.
There are whispers in Whitehall that other legislation is in ministers’ sights. The online safety bill looks like it will be radically redrafted after loud complaints from MPs, including the new cabinet minister Kemi Badenoch, about its restrictions on free speech.
The gambling reform white paper was delayed again over the summer and would fit the mould of the kind of regulatory reform that Truss is keen to avoid burdening businesses with. It would be likely to cause an outcry, however. The new chief secretary to the Treasury, Chris Philp, is a champion of the reforms and made them a key part of his resignation letter during the mass walkouts over Boris Johnson’s behaviour.
The dismissal of Zac Goldsmith as environment minister has also set tongues wagging about the future of the animal welfare bill, including regulation on trophy hunting.
Cabinet sources emphasise that everything is up for review – and nothing is guaranteed to be safe. “Anything that puts additional burdens on business or seems like unnecessary interference in people’s lives during a time of crisis is in our sights,” one said.
