With a Reform UK or Reform/Conservative government in 2029 looking increasingly plausible, talk has naturally turned to what it will do and how it will do it. The “how” is as important, if not more important, than the “what” given the recent experience of (nominally) Conservative governments. Those governments found their room to manoeuvre heavily constrained by Blair-era constitutional vandalism — or used this vandalism as an excuse not to act. Frameworks and processes designed to limit government decision-making were enacted by New Labour and maintained (and in some cases gold-plated) from 2010-2024.

Public authorities are required to act compatibly with ECHR convention rights by the Human Rights Act 1998, to foster good relations between persons who share protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, and to have due regard to environmental principles when making policy under the Environment Act 2021. The net result of bad law and lazy ideology? Process, process and more process. Over all this, meanwhile, looms the spectre of the judiciary: the administrative courts stand ready to quash any policy that doesn’t jump through all these self-imposed loops.

A Reform-led government should find itself chafing even more furiously against these constraints than the current Labour administration given it actively opposes the interventionist ideology underlying the framework. Unfortunately, however, a serious attempt to enact a “Great Repeal” of it all is going to face opposition from the forces maintaining the status quo — in particular the civil service and judiciary. Years, bandwidth and precious political capital would be wasted trying to get an ideologically captured system to rewire itself before a right-wing agenda can even be implemented. After all, the last project for a Great Repeal (EU withdrawal) ended up being a great preservation when delegated to the risk-averse civil service.

There is, therefore, a growing awareness that much of the preparation needs to be done in advance of government. This takes a lesson from Trump 2.0. Agree or disagree with his policy goals, President Trump arrived in office on 20 January 2025 far better prepared to enact them than he was in 2017.

Encouragingly, Reform’s Chairman Zia Yusuf talks of already drafting immigration legislation, Robert Jenrick and Rupert Lowe of drafting a “Great Repeal Act” covering the usual suspects like the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act. The problem: this isn’t some 5-minute job — there are hundreds of thousands of pages of relevant law on the statute book that need to be combed through, and consequential amendments to other legislation and second order effects to be considered.

Business craves certainty and plans years in advance

Tempting as it is, you also can’t burn it all down. This project is about common sense — about restoring the historically successful and flexible elements of the British political constitution, not eliminating them. After all, not every law that came from the EU was bad. It’s easy to condemn regulation in generalities but returning to year zero would not be a libertarian paradise where the common law magically steps in and solves everything. This is detailed and serious work for several important reasons.

Firstly, business craves certainty and plans years in advance. Most product and agricultural/food standards regulation is EU-derived. Mass repeal of it without a principles-based attempt to distinguish pointless red tape from necessary consumer protection will undermine business confidence and pull the rug from under their feet — creating the sort of distracting chaos that sucks the oxygen from a genuine deregulatory agenda.

Secondly, deliberately or negligently, dependencies have been embedded across the system that need to be worked through. Leaving the ECHR/repealing the Human Rights Act will impact the UK’s obligations under the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement and Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU; a mass repeal of retained EU goods regulation will diverge Great Britain from Northern Ireland, the latter following a large subset of EU regulation under the NI Protocol/Windsor Framework. A Great Repeal needs to be flexible enough to account for contingencies like simultaneous negotiations to restore Northern Irish sovereignty (and overturn Labour’s current efforts to align further with the EU).

Thirdly, there are some good or necessary elements within the bad. The Equality Act legalises “positive” discrimination, facilitates dubious equal pay claims under the guise of indirect discrimination and requires public authorities to promote equality of outcome. However, it also consolidates legislation prohibiting direct discrimination based on disability or race. So, it will need to be part-saved: keep the good and bin the bad.

There is a difference between paring back the state — freeing ministers to act decisively — and causing disruption for the sake of it. What we need is principled consideration of the vast corpus of UK law — starting with the worst offenders and moving down, followed by drafting up targeted surgery ready for 2029 (or an earlier General Election). Where we’re proposing to repeal legislation, we would need to consider (1) does it create an administrative gap?; (2) does that matter? (or is that the point?); and (3) if it does matter, does the existing framework need replacement?

The ultimate aim would be to restore both functional governance and a situation where a citizen with agency can understand the plainly expressed rules that apply to his or her conduct, as opposed to having to navigate the deliberately confusing thicket of dispersed laws, cross-references, schedules, definitions and guidance that has become the exclusive domain of lawyers and compliance officers.

As well as being realistic about the work involved, we also need to be up front about the consequences

We should be clear eyed about the scale of the task — there are 6,900 retained EU laws on the statute book and Parliament produces around 3,500 pieces of new legislation each year (without even accounting for the large amount of dross promulgated by regulators such as the FCA). Four years is not a great amount of time for civil actors on the right to try and work through the morass of framework or process — creating legislation, especially without the army of lawyers at the government’s command.

Finally, as well as being realistic about the work involved, we also need to be up front about the consequences: Britain has become too used to the lukewarm bath of the state derisking far too many aspects of our lives. Whether it’s bigger businesses tacitly welcoming regulation because it creates barriers to entry, single-issue pressure groups constantly calling for the state to legislate for their particular project or MPs happy to delegate law-making to Brussels or quangos, change will not be painless. However, a Great Repeal is preferable to the status quo, where the efforts of both right and left-wing governments to implement their policy agenda are stymied by a quagmire of procedure. We just have to do it right.

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