Brexit Freedoms Bill

Brexit Freedoms Bill

“My Government will continue to seize the opportunities of the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union, to support economic growth. Regulations on businesses will be repealed and reformed. A bill will enable law inherited from the European Union to be more easily amended.”

The purpose of the Bill is to:

● Fulfil the manifesto commitment to end the supremacy of European law and seize the benefits of Brexit by ensuring regulation fits the needs of the UK, which in turn will enable economic growth.

The main benefits of the Bill would be:

● Ensuring that retained EU law can be amended, repealed or replaced with legislation which better suits the UK, without this taking decades of parliamentary time to achieve.

● Modernising the UK’s approach to making regulations, improving the nimbleness and competitiveness of the UK economy whilst maintaining high standards.

● Enabling the UK to be the best regulated economy in the world and creating a regulatory environment that encourages prosperity, innovation, entrepreneurship and the cutting of £1 billion of burdensome EU red tape for businesses.

● Asserting the sovereignty of Parliament by removing the supremacy of retained

EU law over UK law in our legal system.

The main elements of the Bill are:

● Creating new powers to strengthen the ability to amend, repeal or replace the large amounts of retained EU law by reducing the need to always use primary legislation to do so.

● Removing the supremacy of retained EU law as it still applies in the UK.

● Clarifying the status of retained EU law in UK domestic law to reflect the fact that much of it became law without going through full democratic scrutiny in the UK

Parliament.

Territorial extent and application

● The Bill will extend and apply across the UK.

Key facts

● As a condition of membership, the UK was required to abide by EU law, giving up its sovereignty and the ability to set rules that diverged from the EU. These laws were implemented into the UK legal system during our EU membership through the European Communities Act 1972 and other legislation. This EU-derived legislation was transferred into UK law as retained EU law. This was a bridging measure when we left the EU to ensure short-term legal stability, but in the knowledge that much of it was not right for the UK in the longer term.

● The Government’s review of retained EU law has, to date, identified over 1,400 pieces of EU-derived law that have been transferred into UK law. Many of these were agreed as a messy compromise between 28 different EU member states and they did not always reflect the UK’s own priorities or objectives. Much of this law was also imposed and changed with minimal parliamentary scrutiny in the past.

● The supremacy of EU law still applies to legislation passed before we left the EU; a total of 2,376 Acts of Parliament. By removing the principle of supremacy, the relationship between EU-derived law and those Acts of Parliament will be changed to ensure that EU-derived law no longer takes priority over laws passed by the UK Parliament. The Bill is an opportunity to address this, realise the benefits of Brexit and ensure that there is no higher law than an Act of

Parliament.

● The Bill will significantly reduce the amount of time needed to make retained EU legislation fit for the UK, meaning the Government can more quickly implement the benefits of Brexit.