EXCLUSIVE: Rishi Sunak has been asked by senior civil servants to delay the "bonfire" of EU retained law by three years until 2026 It's the latest blow to the government's claims to be securing post-Brexit freedoms bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Around 4,000 pieces of EU retained law are currently due to be "sunsetted" by the end of 2023 Senior officials have told ministers that deadline will be hard to meet They say it would require thousands of civil servants to work on it full time bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Officials tasked with reviewing EU legislation on the UK statute book have been given detailed questionnaires with 25 questions for EACH of the 4,000 pieces of law Many of the 25 questions have a, b, and c sub-questions bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Examples of the questions include estimating precise cost benefits for British businesses of removing each piece of legislation And providing an exhaustive breakdown of how the laws are intertwined with British legislation and regulation bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

One official involved complains that it would take several days to answer some of the individual questions They said each questionnaire would require 5,000 words of answers 4,000 laws x 5,000 words = 20 million words of responses Or 40,000 A4 pages bloomberg.com/news/articles/…