The government should provide a “clear warning in advance” of which EU laws they intend to retain and which they intend to revoke, according to Lord Anderson of Ipswich during a debate in the House of Lords.
The debate over the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) bill, which concerns which EU law should be applied to a post-Brexit Britain, took place on 6th June.
The bill works by taking a snapshot of EU law as it applied to the UK on the December 31, 2020 (the end of the Brexit transition period),
In the debate, Anderson said that he wanted to seek a “guarantee” from the government that the directly affected provisions will be fully included in dashboard updates and that it will “give us clear warning in advance” of the EU laws which it intends to carry over into UK law and those which won’t carry over.
Anderson warned that “unpicking provisions so deeply embedded in our law will not be a simple business” and that “such a commitment” will be helpful to anyone who needs to understand what the law provides and how it is intended to be changed.
Anderson justified this call for action by stating that the government had so far not included the directly affected provision in the dashboard updates.
Speaking on how the bill would affect regulated financial services, Simon Harrington, head of public affairs at Pimfa, explained that, while other bills, such as the financial services and markets bill, provides for the revocation of onshore EU law as it applies to financial services, “the key difference here is that it allows this Government to do so in an iterative manner".
Speaking on the sunset clause which would have come into force at the end of the year, Harrington said: “We do not think that installing hard deadlines, with little consideration of their practical implications is conducive to good policy.”
Harrington went on to state that, to this end, he welcomed the government's recent move to “soften” the bill.
tom.dunstan@ft.com
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