What does the new UK government plan to do eg with our old enemy the Working Time Directive?

According to the BBC:

As part of the EU truce, the Conservatives will drop their plan to seek an opt-out from some social legislation, especially the working time directive, but will seek to "limit (its) application".

Owen Tudor of the Touchstone/TUC blog, a fan of said directive:

But there is a bizarre commitment to limit the application of the Working Time Directive in the UK, which is presumably mere window dressing – any reduction in what we have now (which is no more than the Directive demands) would almost certainly leave the Government open to infraction proceedings for failing to implement the Directive sufficiently.

The only provision that exceeds the irreducible legal minimum is Labour’s extension of annual leave from the 4 weeks in the Directive to 5.6 weeks so that anyone who has to work bank holidays can take other days off in lieu. It would be illiberal in the extreme (and very unpopular with ordinary people) to take that extra annual leave away – so is that really what they mean?

Who knows?

This is a classic example of where an EU powerplay with huge and mainly negative ramifications for the UK economy, difficult enough to deal with in the corridors of Brussels where the tough negotiations are hammered out, gets all the more unmanageable if counsels are divided in London too.

As previously mentioned, these little understood but practically momentous European norms will be a minefield for the new coalition, the more so once things start to get difficult and the first serious rows break out.

As they will.

I’ll find out what official Whitehall mechanisms are being set up to try to keep things under control, and let you know.