Dear constituent,
Thank you for contacting me about Brexit and/or the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill.
The arguments for and against Brexit were debated exhaustively in the referendum and in the 6 years since. The British people decided to leave the EU and this was re-confirmed at the election of 2019. I voted to leave the EU and stand by the benefits of Brexit as outlined during and since the referendum. Outside of the EU, the UK has more control over a number of areas including our borders, laws, sovereignty and money and is able to take an international approach to trade with the largest economies in the world rather that the "one size fits all" approach of the EU.
The Trade and Cooperation Agreement was a historic achievement that delivered on the promises of the EU referendum and the Conservative Party manifesto, which the British people supported in the General Election 2019. As part of the Agreement, there are no tariffs or quotas for trade in goods between the UK and the EU. This was the first time that the EU agreed such a deal and it provides the UK with the same benefits in tariffs and quotas that EU member states enjoy.
The UK once again has the ability to make its own trade deals and the Government has an ambitious trade policy in place which will seize on the opportunities available to us as a sovereign trading nation. Recent achievements of this trade policy include securing far-reaching trade agreements with Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. I am very encouraged by the progress that the Government is making in securing trade deals. As of last year, the UK has made trade agreements with 70 countries, worth £760 billion, and I welcome the progress made on joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
The CPTPP delivers on a post-Brexit agenda for a modern, free-trading global Britain. The UK's membership represents the future of our global trade, partnering with Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand, and emerging markets such as Mexico, Malaysia and Vietnam. It adds another like-minded partner and strong voice to this powerful alliance, taking the trade bloc’s GDP to £11 trillion. It gives UK businesses tariff-free access on over 99 per cent of goods to a market of around 500 million customers. The partnership will also provide new opportunities for tech, data and the services sector supporting UK businesses and jobs.
The Business and Trade Secretary has now officially signed our Accession Protocol to the CPTPP. The next step in the accession process will be a legal review of the agreement text. This will be followed by formal signature of the agreement. After this, the Department for Business and Trade will commission the Trade and Agriculture Commission to prepare its advice on the impact of the agreement on plant and animal life. The agreement text will then be formally laid in Parliament.
In the future, I believe that the UK will be able to adapt more easily to the changes and technological innovations of the coming decades. We will be able to set regulations for new sectors to encourage investment and new ideas more quickly than the EU. We will be able to set rules for our benefit. This was made immediately clear in the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine which began in December 2020. The UK procured vaccines months before the EU, approved the vaccine weeks before the bloc, and vaccinated millions of people at a far quicker pace than our partners on the continent.
The Government also has ambitious plans to level-up the different regions of the country. Free from the limitations of EU funding, the Government introduced the £4.8 billion Levelling Up Fund, which will invest in local infrastructure projects that improve everyday life, alongside £2.6 billion of investment through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF). The UKSPF will invest in domestic priorities and target funding where it is needed most: building pride in place, supporting high quality skills training, supporting pay, employment and productivity growth and increasing life chances.
In relation to our border laws, it has been possible to end free movement. In its place a points-based immigration system has been introduced, focused on skilled workers and the best global talent, with skills, salary thresholds and an English-language requirement. At the same time, it has been possible to protect the rights of EU citizens living in the UK under the EU Settlement Scheme, with more than 6 million EU citizens granted settled or pre-settled status in the UK.
As set out above, it will also be possible to stop payments to the EU for our membership. Leaving the European Union has given us the ability to manage our own money and we now have control over all aspects of our fiscal policy. This has allowed us to spend our money on domestic priorities like improving the NHS. By the 2024–2025 financial year our yearly expenditure on the NHS is projected to be £57 billion higher in cash terms than we spent in 2016 –17, or over £1 billion more per week.
In relation to our laws, the EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill will deal with retained the EU Law which was not intended to sit on the statute book indefinitely - The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
By making it clear which regulations will be removed from our statute book, businesses and all those affected by these laws will have certainty. The Government will retain the vitally important powers in the Act that allow it to continue to amend retained EU law, so more complex regulation can still be revoked or reformed after further assessment and consultation.
t ensures that by the end of this year, for the first time in a generation, the UK’s statute book will not recognise the supremacy of EU law or EU legal principles. However, as the Bill was originally drafted, almost all retained law was automatically revoked at the end of 2023, unless a statutory instrument is passed to preserve it. I am pleased to say that the Government has already revoked or reformed over 1,000 EU laws since our exit. In addition to the list of around 600 which will be revoked through the Bill, the Financial Services and Markets Bill and the Procurement Bill will revoke around a further 500 pieces of retained EU law. The Government is 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.
Over the past year, Whitehall departments have been working hard to identify retained EU law 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 was preserved had forced departments to focus on which laws should be preserved, ahead of prioritising meaningful reform.
As a result, the Government tabled an amendment to the Bill which replaced the sunset in the Bill with a list of all of the EU laws that will be revoked under the Bill at the end of 2023. This provides certainty for business by making it clear which regulations will be removed from our statute book. It will retain the vitally important powers in the Bill that allow the Government to continue to amend retained EU law, so more complex regulation can still be revoked or reformed after proper assessment and consultation. This will ensure ministers and officials can focus on more reform of retained EU law, and doing that faster.
Proposed reforms will, of course, be subject to the appropriate parliamentary scrutiny mechanisms, which will ensure that parliamentarians can scrutinise the use of the powers in the Bill throughout the lifetime of the programme. In particular, all statutory instruments (SIs) which significantly reform retained EU law will be subject to the affirmative procedure and will be debated by both Houses. SIs which reform retained EU law in any limited way, which revoke retained EU law, or which restate interpretive effects will be subject to the sifting procedure, the procedure which worked well for EU Exit SIs. This is a proven method of parliamentary oversight that draws on the experiences of our parliamentary committees.
EU legislation was agreed as a muddled compromise between 28 different EU member states and did not always reflect the UK's own priorities or objectives and this Bill will correct this.
The Government has been clear that this Bill is not about reducing already-existing protections – whether they concern health and safety, employment, the environment or animal welfare or anything else – but rather providing a more efficient and effective route for consolidating, amending and removing unnecessary retained EU law. For example, being outside of the EU, we are able to go further in areas such as environmental protections and on the introduction of Environmental Land Management Scheme which rewards landowners for protecting and enhancing their land rather than the universal approach of the EU which provided subsidies and rewarded landowners based on their ownership of land rather than what they did with it to protect the environment. I have seen a number of inaccurate suggestions that the Government plans to “tear up” environmental reforms or withdraw employment protections. That is categorically not the case. If you would like more information about the Bill and the position regarding the environment, animal welfare, employment rights and/or consumer protection, the details are available here:
It is encouraging that as a result of this Bill, around £1 billion worth of red tape will be removed, giving businesses the confidence to invest and create jobs, while transforming the UK into one of the best regulated economies in the world.
Details of the updated Retained EU Law dashboard, setting out progress, can be found here: Retained EU law dashboard - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Thank you for getting in touch.
Sincerely,
