No 10 Ditches Plan To Scrap EU Laws By End Of The Year

The government has announced a major climbdown over its Brexit plans to remove EU laws from British statute books by the end of the year.

- JON STONE

The EU Retained Law Bill currently going through parliament was due to automatically delete any European legislation at the end of 2023 – unless it was explicitly chosen to be saved. But ministers yesterday quietly confirmed that they were gutting the bill’s “sunset clause” and that the mass deletion would not go ahead as planned. Now, only EU laws specifically chosen to be repealed will be scrapped – with the rest automatically becoming UK law at the end of the year.

The change, confirmed by business secretary Kemi Badenoch in a written ministerial statement, turns the logic of the bill on its head and has enraged some hardcore Brexiteers, who were keen to expunge the influence of Brussels from the statute books. Opposition parties described the change as a “humiliating Uturn” and the remaining bill as a “sinking ship”, while businesses said the move was a “huge sigh of relief”.

There had been concern that workers’ rights and environmental rules might be among those set to be canned by the bill – either intentionally or by accident. Businesses also complained that it created significant uncertainty.