Lisa O’Carroll

We're in the single market.

Outside the single market, the UK is treated like Australia, China, India.

and has to produce, you know, mountains of paperwork with all cargo.

So the SBS agreement is about reducing that.

It won't get rid of them, but it's about reducing it.

And it won't mean that the UK is going back into the single market, but it does mean that there will be legislation to transpose EU law back into UK law where it counts.

And on food and drink, there are 76 regulations, laws,

that the UK no longer applies.

So it has to realign.

And that's what this legislation is about.

I think what was significant about that was the suggestion that the legislation would include some sort of chapter that would allow the UK to move beyond the food and drink stuff that they're talking about now and move into other sectors.

And they haven't specified what they're thinking about, but people who know this subject suggest things like medicines.

AI, technology services, financial services.

Yes, I think lots of our listeners will remember the whole phrase of, you know, taking back control.

We're going to be rule makers, not rule takers.

And that was a big, big argument of the Brexit that Boris Johnson pursued.

And he won on those arguments.

So the irony is that Keir Starmer, the Labour government, which by and large voted to remain, is going to use

these statutory instruments to push through alignment with EU law with very little say.

So this legislation that the Labour Party are bringing in is using so-called Henry VIII powers to transpose EU legislation potentially into the UK statute books.