Schedule of retained EU Law that
will be revoked or sunset by 31 December 2023.
Details
Retained EU law (REUL) was
established by The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 to ensure
legal certainty and continuity immediately after Brexit, by
preserving all EU and EU-derived law as it stood immediately
before the UK’s departure. However, retained EU law was never
intended to sit on the statute book indefinitely.
The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill allows the
United Kingdom to take the next step in reasserting the
sovereignty of Parliament. It will end the special status of
retained EU law in the UK statute book and will enable the
government to more easily amend, revoke and replace retained EU
law.
On 10 May an amendment was tabled to replace the current sunset
in the Bill with a list of all of the retained EU laws that we
intend to revoke under the Bill by the end of 2023.
The list covers each piece of legislation being revoked and the
reason why it is being removed from the statute book at the end
of 2023. It includes a significant amount of REUL that is defunct and unnecessary now
we have left the EU. This is an efficient way of removing such
legacy regulation from our statute book and represents good
lawmaking. The schedule also includes some REUL which we can now remove which had
been designed in a way which was clearly contrary to the needs
and requirements of the UK. For example The Port Services
Regulations set out reporting and consultation requirements
designed for the largely publicly-owned EU ports sector, which
place unnecessary burdens on the predominantly private-sector UK
port operators.
The government has already revoked or reformed over 1,000 EU laws
since our exit. In addition to the list of around 600 we propose
to revoke directly through the REUL Bill, the Financial Services and
Markets Bill and the Procurement Bill will revoke around a
further 500 pieces of REUL.
We are committed to lightening the regulatory burden on
businesses and helping to spur economic growth, and our Edinburgh
Reforms of UK financial services include over 30 regulatory
reforms to unlock investment and boost growth in towns and cities
across the UK.
However, this is far from the limit of our ambition. The
government will continue to review the REUL not already revoked or reformed or
planned for revocation this year to identify further
opportunities for reform.
As a down payment on our commitment to deliver meaningful reform,
our regulatory reform announcement Smarter Regulation to Grow
the Economy, published on 10 May 2023, sets out our intention
to reform regulations and remove burdens on businesses.
We announced changes that will reduce disproportionate EU-derived
reporting requirements that could save businesses around £1
billion a year. This was the first in a series of announcements
the government will make in the coming months on reforming
regulation to drive growth.