If you hate Jacob Rees-Mogg’s bonfire of rights, here’s what you can do about it

In the past months of turmoil in Westminster, a piece of legislation has been quietly making its way through parliament that has been described as being on a par with a Kwasi Kwarteng budget in its capacity for destruction.

The Retained EU Law Bill has generated little interest for most until recently, seemingly a simple parliamentary process bill which seeks to provide a mechanism for reviewing legislation affected by the lingering impact of Brexit. With its final day in the Commons approaching next week, this is the last chance to warn MPs that if this bill is passed unamended they will make themselves redundant.

It was the brainchild of Jacob Rees-Mogg but the current prime minister is too weak and too scared of the Brexiteers to pull it back. Motivated by their hatred of all things European, the Retained EU Law Bill uses Brexit as cover for a power grab – deleting all legislation from the UK statute book which is in any way associated with the EU.

The number of laws affected currently stands at about 4,000 pieces of legislation which will be revoked in one go at the end of December 2023. However, the government has had to admit that in picking this target it is unclear quite how many rights and regulations are set for deletion, with civil servants desperately trying to work out what will happen if it is enacted.

Without even knowing what is contained within the scope of this bill there is a serious danger the legislation could fall through the cracks. If any law is not specifically identified, rewritten or at least an extension requested, by the end of this year it will be scrapped by default.

This is a bigger problem for some departments than others, with only a handful of laws covered by the Department of Education team but thousands by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA). It is estimated DEFRA would have to revoke or rewrite three laws a day to meet the target of completing this programme by the end of the year.

If that was not concerning enough, currently there are 800 pieces of legislation which no department has specific responsibility for, but will also be deleted. These are not minor amendments – at stake are key protections on which the British public have relied for generations. They include those such as the right to paid holiday and equal pay, as well as things such as the standards preventing cancer-causing materials being used in cosmetic products, protection of animal welfare issues, plane safety rules and compensation when flights are delayed. Instead of asking MPs to decide what happens next, this bill gives that power directly to ministers and so bypasses parliamentary sovereignty.

By removing the ability of MPs to represent the concerns of their constituents in what fills the gap left by deleting all these laws, this bill sets a dangerous precedent about the powers ministers can have which could be exploited by governments of any colour.

It also writes into law what many feared was a motivation for Brexit, because it compels ministers who use the powers this bill gives them not to use them to support any new regulations which are of a higher standard than the ones that are being taken away. Clause 15(5) states that the new laws cannot increase the regulatory burden, meaning regulations and rights must stay the same or be weakened. This closes the door to any chance of reforming laws in order to ensure we lead the world in protecting jobs, human rights and the environment.

The REUL Bill shares nothing with Brexit except its title. It is a naked attempt to undermine our democracy by getting parliament to sign away any say it might have on rights, regulations and the future relationship with our closest neighbours. This would open the doors for a small group of government MPs’ cronies to push through a vision of a low-regulation, low-rights society with nothing any of us can do about it.

There is still time to stop this madness. You can write to your MP now by following this link and asking them to join cross-party initiatives to defend parliamentary sovereignty and require the government to respect parliament in how it governs post-Brexit.

Those leading this amendment are asking every MP to join them challenging the government to set out which laws they want the power to delete and asking them to explain why the public should be dislocated from the democratic process in this way. If you want to make your own feelings clear to those who are supposed to represent you, you have until Wednesday.

Stella Creasy is Labour MP for Walthamstow and chair of the Labour Movement for Europe