The UK government has reportedly decided to scale back its plans to scrap or review EU laws by the end of this year.
The news has been greeted by employee representatives and health and safety campaigners as a welcome development as concerns grew over workers’ rights such as holiday pay and maternity pay after the Bill’s passage through the Commons in January.
The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill is currently at report stage in the House of Lords. It was designed to scrap 4,000 EU laws, which were kept in the UK statute book after the UK’s departure from the European Union to ensure continuity. Any exceptions would have to be approved by ministers.
But it has been widely reported that this week business and trade secretary Kemi Badenoch has told backbench Conservative MPs that more than three-quarters of the EU legislation would remain law and only about 800 pieces of legislation would be removed. It is believed by commentators that the UK government is now preparing to abandon a 31 December 2023 “sunset clause” under which EU laws would expire automatically if they had not been altered or retained.
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The news follows a warning from 25 leading British safety bodies that proceeding with the Bill – which is sponsored by Jacob Rees-Mogg MP – would seriously endanger workplace standards.
Far fewer laws are now likely to be scrapped because opposition to the Bill poses a serious threat to it in the House of Lords. And Badenoch was reported to have told MPs that there was no capacity in the civil service to examine each of the 4,000 laws and make recommendations by the end of the year.
When the bill was first introduced last year, the government stated that 2,000 laws would be affected, but it then discovered that the bill would have to accommodate at least 1,700 further pieces of legislation.
Raoul Ruparel, director for Boston Consulting Group’s Centre for Growth, who advised former prime minister Theresa May on Brexit, said the new approach was “surely how the process was meant to work” adding that removing laws “for the sake of it” would be “nonsense”.
Ministers must now come clean on their plans and give firm commitments that they will not touch our hard-won workers’ rights” – Paul Nowak, TUC
TUC general secretary Paul Nowak welcomed the change in direction: “The government is finally having second thoughts about its disastrous plan to rip up hard-won workers’ rights,” he said.
“But with 800 laws still being scrapped at the end of the year, ministers must now come clean on their plans and give firm commitments that they will not touch our hard-won workers’ rights.
“Holiday pay, rest breaks, equal pay for women and men – these are just some of our essential rights that are still at risk.
“And the bill could upend decades of case law – making it harder for workers to enforce their rights in the court – as well as creating chaos and confusion in the legal system.”
In a joint letter to ministers, 25 organisations including the TUC, British Safety Council, Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, CIPD and Institution of Occupational Safety and Health have explained why the bill presents physical risks to workers, citing the 2012 Control of Asbestos Regulations, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, and the Work at Height Regulations 2005.
The bill returns to the House of Lords in mid-May.
Partner Patrick Brodie, head of the employment, engagement and equality practice at international law firm RPC, warned that the government’s rethink was not the end of the bill, and reports of Badenoch’s comments “should be treated with caution and some scepticism”.
He said: “The number of laws in immediate peril could be reduced for now, but this might simply be a stay of execution for those that had been previously identified.
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“Laws that were at risk of being taken to the guillotine at the end of the year could, after the bill has passed, still end up on the bonfire.”
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