The Retained EU Law (REUL) Bill was introduced with the intention of revoking the EU legislation from the UK by the end of 2023. Over the past year Whitehall departments have been working hard to identify REUL to preserve, reform or revoke. However, it has become clear that the default of retained EU law sunsetting at the end of this year unless it is preserved has forced departments to focus on which laws should be preserved, ahead of prioritising meaningful reform.
On May 10th, the Department of Business and Trade has informed that they are proposing a new approach where the Government is tabling an amendment that will replace the current sunset in the Bill with a list of all of the EU laws that they intend to revoke under the Bill at the end of 2023. This provides businesses and other organizations clarity about what regulations will be removed from UK law.
The Department of Business and Trade has also published a paper “Smarter Regulation to Grow the Economy” which outlines a plan to reduce the amount of regulations that businesses have to follow. A copy of this report can be found here.
The REUL Dashboard has been updated to provide an overview of the percentages of REUL that are amended, repealed or replaced. The data used to populate the dashboard can be found here.
