THE GREAT Repeal Bill, which caused the government further political problems this week, has always struck me as a badly named piece of legislation.

It does not in fact repeal anything, but instead switches the 'ownership' of legislation from Brussels to London. When the bill is finally agreed, we will have the same legislation, but it will be UK legislation. This has to be something of a disappointment for those that voted for Brexit, in the expectation that it would be the end of EU legislation.

The debate now shifts to the pace at which that legislation will eventually be removed from the statute books. For farmers, much CAP legislation will be irrelevant after 2020. However it seems the government wants to introduce greening regulations that will go even further than the CAP. The end product could well be more draconian that the EU regulations.

The same applies to environmental and health and safety regulations. It would be a brave government – and not one with a tiny majority – that would have the courage to end EU environmental regulations.

This shifts the debate for the farming lobby. Its battleground when we are out of the CAP will be to press for EU legislation to be dismantled. The worry with a lot of the regulations that so frustrate farmers is whether the will exists to remove them. The government's record on doing so, to date, is not impressive.

Indeed, if years of covering EU affairs and visiting just about every farming country has taught me anything, it is that no-one implements regulations with the zeal of the UK civil service. Its approach is not only to comply with EU rules, but to go further so that they can emulate Caesar's wife, by being beyond any possibility of reproach.

Even if there is a big change of approach across government, another issue will make it difficult to scrap regulations carried forward. The UK will need to trade with the EU-27, by selling farm produce into that market. Given that the government is committed to leaving the customs union, which is the basis of the Single Market, the EU-27 will set regulations for the UK, the same as it does for other third countries.

It is difficult to imagine that, if key parts of EU regulations are scrapped in the UK, the EU-27 will allow trade to continue without them. This will apply to a wide range of regulation-rich areas, from animal welfare, through the environment to health and safety.

Given that negotiations with Brussels are now so rancorous it seems inevitable that it will impose rules that will punish the UK for leaving, not least because its departure will leave a big hole in the already tight CAP budget.

One of the big unknowns for farmers across the UK is what support structures will be in place after Brexit, and our transition away from the CAP between 2019 and 2020. Uncertainty is always frustrating in a long term business like agriculture. Facing that, farmers had the comfort that even if they had stayed in the EU, the CAP was going to change dramatically after 2020.

That has long been a given, but now there are a growing number of voices pressing for CAP reform to be delayed. This is on grounds that there is already sufficient uncertainty and confusion because of Brexit, and doubts abut the future size of the EU and CAP budgets.

Now the biggest group in the European parliament, the European People's Party, is suggesting reform should be put on the back burner until 2024. As an idea this makes a lot of sense, since it would delay change until it becomes clearer what will happen with Brexit.

There is also a strong argument that the traditional pressures for reform are not there. Apart from the impact of the UK's departure from the EU, the CAP budget is under no pressure; there is also no problem with surpluses, as was the case in past reforms, and there are also no problems on home or export markets. Indeed the EU is enjoying a food export boom.

This could all leave the UK as the only country in Europe facing a radical change to its farm support structures in 2020. That will make change even harder to take for those who do not want it, while those who voted for Brexit will be disappointed much of the legislation they wanted to escape will still be there.