Latest updates: Kwasi Kwarteng says subsidy control bill will help UK make better use of state aid
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Good morning. It is an important day for Brexit news. The morning the high court in Belfast will rule on a legal challenge to the Northern Ireland protocol, this afternoon the EU is expected to confirm that it has agreed to extend the grace period for chilled meats under that protocol (averting the so-called “sausage ban” for the moment), and in parliament the government is presenting what is being described as its most important piece of post-Brexit legislation to date – the subsidy control bill.
Brexiters argued that one of the big advantages of leaving the EU was that the UK would no longer be bound by the EU’s rules on state aid. Critics were sceptical, partly because most of those Brexiters were Tories who were ideologically sceptical of state aid anyway, partly because even when the UK was in the EU other EU countries used state aid more and partly because the Brexiters found it hard to give examples of the sort of subsidies they wanted to hand out to industry that were not allowed under Brussels rules. But during the general election campaign Boris Johnson promised to make better use of state aid after Brexit, in a move that helped to make the Conservatives sound more interventionist and high-spending, and that may have increased their appeal in the “Red Wall”.
Today we’re seizing the opportunities of being an independent trading nation to back new and emerging British industries, create more jobs and make the UK the best possible place to start and grow a business.
We want to use our newfound freedoms as an independent, sovereign country to empower public authorities across the UK to deliver financial support – without facing burdensome red tape.
