Exclusive : New Brussels red – tape costs Britain astonishing £ 5billion in … – Daily Mail

• Study by Tory MP Priti Patel uncovers 250 new rules in 2011 and 2012
• Official impact assessments reveal cost equivalent to £9,500-a-minute
• Revelations come ahead of Commons debate on in-out referendum
• European Commission insists benefits of Brussels are much higher
  

By
Matt Chorley, Mailonline Political Editor

PUBLISHED:

06:48 EST, 3 July 2013

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UPDATED:

08:49 EST, 3 July 2013

Brussels has imposed £5billion worth of new red tape on Britain in just two years, a damning new analysis reveals today.

New laws, regulations and rules form Europe have cost the equivalent of £9,500 every minute since the start of 2011.

The revelation sparked claims that UK families were bearing the cost of Euro diktats slipped through the ‘backdoor with little scrutiny’.

Around 250 new measures were introduced to Britain as a result of rules from European institutions in 2011 and 2012.

Of these, 74 imposed additional costs of £5billion to taxpayers and businesses.

They included more than £800million on green fuels, £250million from packaging and recycling demands and £800million forcing self-employed drivers to cut the hours they work.

The biggest single cost was from regulations introduced after the European Court of Justice banned insurance companies from charging lower premiums for women drivers.

The amendments to the Equality Act 2010 cost an extra £923million.

The European Commission said the figures do not include the benefits of the regulations or the wider advantages of Britain’s membership of the EU.

But Tory MP Priti Patel, who compiled the
data, said: ‘New red tape from Europe is strangling British businesses,
placing a significant impact upon our economy and adding huge costs to
Britain’s hard-pressed families.

‘These rules are being imposed through the backdoor with little scrutiny or opportunities to amend them or scrap them.’

The revelation comes ahead of the first Commons debate on Tory plans to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU.

Conservative backbencher James Wharton is using a Private Members Bill to try to legislate for a vote to be held by the end of 2017, but Labour and the Lib Dems are opposed to the idea.

Ms Patel added: ‘The British people are fed up with Europe’s unaccountable bureaucrats and judges meddling in their way of life and expect MPs to stand up for the British interest by voting for a referendum on our membership of the EU.

‘In advance of the referendum, ministers throughout Government need to do more to stop this country being blackmailed by Europe’s unaccountable bureaucratic elite.’

Ms Patel tabled a series of parliamentary questions asking every government department which regulations they had been forced to introduce by Europe.

She then analysed official impact assessments to put a price tag on each measure, which revealed the £5billion cost in just two years.

The order to force self-employed drivers to comply with Working Time rules was imposed at a cost of £806million over 10 years, despite the government admitting ‘evidence suggest that no problem exists in the UK regarding road safety and self-employed drivers’.

A spokesman for the European Commission said: ‘First, the Commission only ever proposes legislation where its impact assessment clearly shows that overall benefits – not reflected in Ms Patel’s figures -outweigh the cost.

‘The UK supported most of the regulations listed so clearly came to the same conclusion – that benefits outweighed costs.

‘For example, most jurisdictions – UK, EU and worldwide – agree that there should be strong rules on hazardous substances and toy safety, even if it costs manufacturers money to minimise the risk that their products kill or maim children.

‘The UK government (BiS) has estimated  the benefits deriving from the single market alone at up to £92billion every year, therefore a huge multiple of Ms Patel’s debatable figure for the alleged costs of Regulation.’

Mr Cameron has promised to
renegotiate a ‘fresh settlement’ with Brussels if he is Prime Minister
after the 2015 election, before holding an in-out referendum

Mr
Wharton’s Bill, drawn up by Tory HQ, says that a referendum ‘must be
held before 31 December 2017’, and says a Cabinet minister must bring
forward parliament orders which name the date by the end of 2016.

But
a briefing paper by the House of Commons library says it means the
legislation as it stands is not legally binding and more parliamentary
votes will be needed on ‘the detailed rules for the poll and the date’.

The issue has caused a major
coalition row, with the Prime Minister claiming Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems
‘have to get off the fence’ and back giving the British public a say.

But
this week Mr Clegg said that he thought Britain was best placed in the
EU and the Liberal Democrats are the ‘the party of in’.

Mean while the Tories were ‘increasingly becoming the party of out’.

Mr Clegg claimed the Conservative position has ‘swerved around enormously in recent months and years, noting that Mr Cameron’s ‘cast-iron pledge’ to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty had not been kept.

He dismissed Mr Cameron’s ‘ill-defined process of so-called renegotiation’, accusing him of plucking the 2017 date out of thin air.

The coalition had already legislated to ensure that there would be an in-out referendum the next time there was a major EU Treaty.

Britain’s national interest is not being served by our current membership of the European Union.

This unaccountable and bureaucratic juggernaut, driven by its dogmatic commitment to ‘ever closer union’, has gained an insatiable appetite for crushing national democracies and circumventing democracy.

Throughout the laws which affect hardworking families and business we can see the carnage that Europe’s bureaucrats and judges have caused. 

Ridiculous laws have hit our economy hard and are stifling growth and job creation. The Working Time Directive prevents the NHS from treating patients. Green energy rules are adding billions of pounds to energy bills.

£5 billion of new regulatory costs have been burdened on this country in the last two years.

While we have lost control of our immigration system and been compelled to accept millions of new foreigners and asylum seekers into Britain, taxpayers have been forced to stump up £19.2 billion a year to fill the EU’s bloated coffers.

The EU is not the peace-loving, free trade paradise sold to the British people in the 1970s.

It is an organisation desperate to drain more powers from nation states and, as we have seen with the Eurozone crisis, dictate how countries should be run.

The President of the European Commission has made no secret of his wish to see Europe even more tightly integrated, under the auspices of the Commission. 

Britain cannot afford to be dragged
more closely into Europe’s orbit it is the responsibility of Parliament
to exercise its sovereignty and facilitate the repatriation of powers
through a referendum.

Just as the British people have been
proven to make the right decisions about how they should be governed in
the past, they should be trusted to do so in the future.

They should be able to decide who
makes the laws that affect them and be trusted to pass their judgement
on the control the EU exerts on our immigration system, farming and
fisheries policies.

Now is the time to let the people
decide whether they wish to reject membership of the European Union and
instead reaffirm the principle that British laws should be made by
British people in Britain.

This is why Friday’s vote on in the
House of Commons on the EU Referendum Bill is so important and has the
potential to be a defining moment in the history of British democracy.

Members of Parliament have an opportunity to send out a powerful and decisive statement to the public and to the European Union about how Britain should be governed.

With a strong turnout in Parliament and vote in support of the Bill, Britain will be one step closer to putting to an end four decades of centralisation and power-grabbing by Europe’s political elite.

But, despite this opportunity to empower the British people, it is shameful that Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs are planning to abstain.

The fact that the two parties who conspired five years ago to deny us the referendum promised on the Lisbon Treaty still do not trust the British people to decide is not surprising.

But it is astounding that when we live in an era where referendums have become commonplace and are used to decide everything from endorsing a local neighbourhood development plan to changing the Parliamentary voting system that Labour and Lib Dems dub this referendum a ‘stunt’ and ‘gimmick’.

Only those afraid to put their arguments in favour of the European Union to the people would hold them in such contempt.

As well as facing the disparaging attitude of Labour and the Lib Dems, those who back a referendum have received a hostile reception from the European Commission and its President.

They prefer to scaremonger the public. But those in Britain and in Europe who stand in the way of letting the British people decide their own destiny are on the wrong side of the argument.