Jacob Rees-Mogg has accused the prime minister of breaking his word over the decision not to scrap thousands of EU laws by the end of the year.
On Wednesday, the trade secretary, Kemi Badenoch, outlined changes to a supposed “bonfire” of EU legislation, which had originally meant thousands of laws would automatically face the axe on 31 December under a controversial “sunset clause” deadline.
The government now aims to remove 800 statutes and regulations, instead of the 3,700 laws it had previously said it would scrap.
These included laws related to passenger rights and compensation for cancelled flights, equality in employment, and environmental standards and protections.
As part of his leadership bid, Rishi Sunak had promised to review or repeal EU laws in his first 100 days in office.
The new plan came to light after Badenoch briefed Eurosceptic MPs in the European Research Group at a meeting in April.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday, Rees-Mogg said Sunak had “broken his word”, which was “very serious”.
He said: “Politicians have not delivered. This comes back to the prime minister’s promise in his video during his leadership campaign when he said he would do this.
“Bear in mind at that time, he had already given right round consent to the retained EU law bill. I had briefed him on it. [The prime minister] knew that it wasn’t easy. He knew that it was going to be an effort to get it done by actually a slightly longer deadline at that point. He accepted the deadline of 2023.”
Rees-Mogg continued his attack on the prime minister, accusing him of “behaving like a Borgia”.
He said: “Politicians need to stick to what they said they will do.
“When Rishi Sunak resigned [as chancellor], he said in his resignation letter to Boris Johnson that he believed the public are ready to hear the truth – our people know that if something is too good to be true, then it’s not true.
“He then said something that people like me wanted to hear, and has failed to deliver it.
“I’m afraid it’s no good being holier-than-thou if you then end up behaving like a Borgia.”
Rees-Mogg went on to defend the government initially setting a deadline of the end of the year to scrap thousands of EU laws, and called its reversal a “great missed opportunity”.
He said: “The Bank of England will be meeting later on and is likely to raise interest rates because we have an inflationary problem.
“One of the other ways to help tackle inflationary problems is supply side reforms – that is, getting regulations that hold the economy back removed.
“Over decades, we introduced rules from the European Union that made us less economically competitive.
“Setting a deadline theoretically makes Whitehall work – without a deadline, nothing will happen, and we will retain these laws for a long time.”
Badenoch’s decision not to ditch thousands of EU-era regulations was met with opprobrium by Conservatives.
Badenoch appeared to blame Whitehall officials for the move. In an article for the Telegraph, the minister said she had inherited a situation in which the focus was on which laws should be preserved, “rather than pursuing the meaningful reform government and businesses want to see”.
She wrote: “I decided a new approach was needed; one that will ensure ministers and officials are freed up to focus on more reform of REUL (Retained EU Law), and to do it faster.”
Labour described the move as a “humiliating U-turn” from a “weak and divided government” while the Liberal Democrats accused ministers of leaving “a lot of uncertainty” hanging over the status of legislation.
