My ambition is for the UK to become by far the richest country in Europe within 15 years.
As Prime Minister, I would instruct a new Brexit delivery department to review all of the remaining 2,400 laws in our code of law – with the first set of recommendations on whether each law should be scrapped or reformed, within my first 100 days in office .
We need to take the power away from faceless regulators and give that power to the MPs in our Parliament.
I would demand results from the civil service and government, with my Brexit minister making an annual public report on progress in realizing our growth opportunities, and scrapping or reforming the other 2,400 EU laws that are still in our code. .
From day one, there would be three other top priorities.
The government would scrap the EU financial services regulations we inherited — including the EU’s Solvency II rules — to trigger a Big Bang 2.0. This will help investors and insurers put money into assets such as infrastructure that will fuel growth and reap long-term benefits for our country.
Second, the government would also remove the burden of the GDPRcreating the most dynamic data protection regime in the world instead.
EU Byzantine rules prevent UK tech companies from innovating and public services sharing data to prevent crime. As any internet user can see, the GDPR – with all its bureaucratic ticks – is clearly not working and needs to be replaced.
Thirdly, I would make sure that we can speed up the clinical trial approval process, which is still complicated and slowed down by EU bureaucracy.
Our success in getting the Covid vaccines approved showed how we can move outside the EU faster and save millions of lives. We should now replicate that success in other areas with a streamlined, single clinical trial approval service in the UK – making it simpler, safer and faster than the system we inherited from the EU.
Ultimately, the best way to get the cost of living under control is to grow the economy by increasing productivity.
We must seize the opportunities that Brexit has given us and reduce the laws and regulations that stand in the way.
In my government, our top priority would be to create the faster economic growth we need to become the most prosperous country in Europe.
We’ve done Brexit. Now we urgently need to seize more of the opportunities it has presented to us.