Joseann
I refer to the link provided by * Maggiemaybe*. It is all about "how we will achieve our vision".
It’s not actually, Joseann. The first section refers to things the government claim to have done already.
Now, apologies for the very long post to follow but never fear, I promise this will be my last on the thread. As the OP says, there’s no point in discussing - there never has been really. That wasn’t ever the point of the thread.
Thank you, Dinahmo, for taking the time to look at the list. Like you, I have little time to spare and many other things I should be doing - I just wanted to move this thread on a little by providing some information that seemed to be pertinent to the constant demands for a list of possible Brexit benefits.
To clarify, I am not and never have been a supporter of this government and as I’ve said several times now, I voted to remain. I would, like you, take many of the assertions in the document with a huge pinch of salt.
I do believe in fairness though, am not in the business of endlessly running this country down, and although I agree that much of the document is pie in the sky, some points seem reasonable to me. As I said earlier, because of the EU tendering rules for the public sector I once had to abandon a project that would have been hugely beneficial, so I’m glad to see they’ve already gone. Some of the other claims in the document that might be up for discussion by those who actually want to debate, are:
● Restored democratic control over our lawmaking. We gave the power to make and scrutinise the laws that apply to us back to our Parliament and the devolved Parliaments so that they are now made in Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London, not Brussels.
● Restored the UK Supreme Court as the final arbiter of the law that applies in the UK. UK judges, sitting in UK courts, now determine the law of the land in the UK, with judgments issued in English, not French, and accessible to those who speak Welsh.
● Made it tougher for EU criminals to enter the UK. EU nationals sentenced to a year or more in jail will now be refused entry to the UK. Under EU free movement we had to allow some foreign criminals into the country who would otherwise have been stopped and turned away. We have now brought the rules for EU criminals who are not protected by the Withdrawal Agreement in line with other foreign criminals.
● Restored fair access to our welfare system. We ended the preferential treatment of EU migrants over non-EU migrants, ensuring that wherever people are born, those who choose to make the UK their home pay into the system for a reasonable period of time before they can access the benefits of it.
● Set our own tariff regime via the UK Global Tariff. Our new UK Global Tariff is more tailored to the needs of the UK economy and denominated in pounds, not euros. We streamlined and simplified nearly 6,000 tariff lines, lowering costs for businesses by reducing administrative burdens, scrapped thousands of unnecessary tariff variations on products and expanded tariff-free trade by eliminating tariffs on a wide range of products.
● Banning the export of live animals for fattening and slaughter. Brexit enables us to ban the export of live animals for fattening and slaughter and improve the welfare of our farm animals.
● Ending the abhorrent, cruel practice of puppy smuggling and low-welfare pet imports. We are reducing the number of pet dogs, cats and ferrets that can be moved under the pet travel rules which apply to non-commercial movements, in order to prevent unscrupulous traders from exploiting our pet travel rules and bringing in powers to enable us to go even further to protect the welfare of our pets by introducing new import restrictions.
● Established an independent sanctions policy. Our new independent sanctions policy means we are more agile when deciding how and where to use sanctions, while continuing to coordinate with our international partners. The UK uses its sanctions regimes as part of an integrated approach to promote our values and interests and to combat state threats, terrorism, cyber-attacks and the use and proliferation of chemical weapons. We were the first European country to sanction the regime in Belarus and, overall, the UK imposed sanctions against 160 individuals and entities in its first full year running a fully independent UK sanctions policy.
I do think some of these merit consideration, but I’ll leave you to it.
