Government backtracks on EU law repeal plans

Government plans to force the expiry at the end of this year of thousands of pieces of UK legislation deriving from the European Union have been dramatically scaled back.

Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch said the Retained European Union Law Bill, which proposes to set the sunset date, would be amended when it returns to the Commons from the House of Lords to set a list of 600 named pieces of legislation intended to be replaced by that date. The Lords stages have still to take place.

As predicted by critics of the bill, the Government has found it more difficult than it expected even to identify all the 4,000+ individual legislative items that would be affected by a general repeal. Fears have been expressed that it would lead to important legal protections being unintentionally lost. There has also been criticism of the extent of ministerial powers conferred by the bill – and concerns now that further powers could be conferred to achieve an ongoing process of replacement of legislative rules with little parliamentary scrutiny.

In a statement Ms Badenoch said the growing volume of EU laws identified had begun to get in the way of "meaningful reform". The general repeal approach was also creating uncertainty for business.

However former Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, who devised the Retained EU Law Bill, called the climbdown an "admission of administrative failure" that showed an "inability of Whitehall to do the necessary work and an incapability of ministers to push this through their own departments".

The opposition called the move a humiliating u-turn, with ministers having dug themselves into a hole over the bill. During his leadership campaign last year, Rishi Sunak promised in his first 100 days to publish a list of EU laws that would be retained or repealed.