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LONDON — The U.K. will water down its timetable for replacing or removing thousands of EU laws post-Brexit, scrapping a self-imposed December 2023 deadline.
The government climbdown — announced Wednesday — comes amid pushback to the Retained EU Law Bill from Conservative Party MPs and members of the House of Lords. Lawmakers have called for the timetable to be slowed and for parliament to have more scrutiny over the major regulatory overhaul.
The approach also drew flak from British businesses who warned it created serious regulatory uncertainty.
The bill, championed by former Business Secretary and arch-Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, originally contained a “sunset clause” which would have automatically deleted every EU law which hadn’t already been reviewed by the government.
But Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch has now amended the bill so that only several hundred laws, which will be publicly announced by the government ahead of time, will be subject to the 2023 sunset clause.
The move is likely to anger Tory Brexiteers who want to see the U.K. quickly move away from retained EU legislation.
“I have listened to the concerns of business of all sizes and have made it a priority to tackle the red tape that holds back UK firms, reduces their competitiveness in global markets and hampers their growth,” Badenoch said.
The government said its decision to change the sunset clause would allow it to more properly target laws in need of reform and to ensure vital safety regulations were not unintentionally removed.
‘Meaningful reform’
Badenoch wrote Wednesday in the Telegraph that the previous 2023 deadline meant the civil service was focussing “on which laws should be preserved ahead of the deadline, rather than pursuing the meaningful reform government and businesses want to see.”
The legislation will be reintroduced with the changes to the House of Lords next week, after it sailed through the House of Commons earlier this year.
But one Brexiteer Conservative MP said they were “concerned” the government had opted to make the changes in the House of Lords “given that this went through the Commons with such a big majority.”
“It is very odd,” they added.
Government officials believe the changes will also give parliament more scrutiny of the exercise as it will create public timetables by which EU laws need to be removed.
The government also confirmed Wednesday that it will keep the EU’s working time directive, which continues to limit Brits to 48-hour working weeks unless they sign a waiver.
However, some reporting requirements for businesses relating to the directive have been scrapped.
