Guidance

Schedule of retained EU law

Schedule of retained EU Law that will be revoked or sunset by 31 December 2023.

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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 retained EU law to be more easily amended, revoked and replaced.

On 10 May an amendment was tabled to replace the current sunset in the Bill with a list of the retained EU laws that we intend to revoke under the Bill at the end of 2023.

The list covers each piece of legislation being revoked and the reason 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 removes items of REUL that are burdensome and duplicative. For example, we will be removing some items of REUL relating to the National Air Pollution Control Plan (NAPCP). The current format of the NAPCP is long, complicated, resource intensive and duplicative, and does nothing to improve the quality of the air we breathe. By revoking this item, we can better focus on what will actually help clean up our air, such as by delivering on the ambitious air quality targets we have set in statute through the Environmental Act.

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 schedule to 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 remaining REUL not already revoked or reformed, or planned for revocation this year, to identify further opportunities for reform. The REUL Bill contains the necessary powers to allow for this ongoing process of 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, 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 will just be the first in a series of announcements the government will make in the coming months on reforming regulation to drive growth.

Published 15 May 2023
Last updated 17 May 2023 + show all updates
  1. Amended some retained EU law in the schedule, which continues to be a work-in-progress.

  2. Added and amended some retained EU law to the schedule, which continues to be a work-in-progress. Also made some formatting changes to the spreadsheet to make it accessible as an OpenDocument Spreadsheet (ODS).

  3. First published.