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Government wasting “window of opportunity” on REUL reform, Committee Chair says

24 January 2024

The Government is failing to make the most of a “shrinking window of opportunity” for reform to retained EU law (REUL) the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee has said.

In a letter to Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch, Sir William Cash said the Government was not devoting enough time and resource to reform. He said this would “be viewed as an entirely avoidable failure by colleagues, and the people and businesses we serve.”

The Chair’s letter comes in response to the Department for Business and Trade’s report on REUL, published on 22 January.

Sir William said the Government had made insufficient progress on reform from June to December 2023, the period covered by the Department’s report. Out of 26 statutory instruments introduced in that time, he said only two were “worthy of note”, while the rest represented technical errors, consolidations and restatements. 

The Chair also criticised the Government for shifting its motivation to carry out REUL reform. He said reform was originally framed as about “seizing the opportunities of Brexit,” and substantively reforming key policy areas, “in line with British legal and constitutional traditions.”

Instead, he said reform was now being defined “more narrowly,” through the Smarter Regulation Programme, which aims to minimise burdensome regulation and make it more effective. This risks “squandering the opportunities presented by the UK’s withdrawal from the EU,” he said.

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Image credit: UK Parliament