Two years of stability ahead.
The government’s emerging plans for Brexit include transposing all EU law into UK law on day one of Brexit – due to be in spring 2019 – and reviewing and possibly repealing regulations later.
The plan was laid out by prime minister Theresa May and David Davis, secretary of state for exiting the EU, at the Tory conference.
They also revealed that the government would trigger Article 50 by the end of March 2017, and conclude the two-stage negotiation process with the EU by spring 2019.
The “Great Repeal Bill” will make its passage through parliament as EU trade and exit negotiations are progressed. It would remove the European Communities act from the statute book, and at the same time transpose existing EU law into British law.
This would end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the UK and enable parliament to amend and cancel EU-derived legislation in the future.
The move is designed to9 give business consistency on the regulatory environment, and appears to align with the arguments put forward two weeks earlier in a report by manufacturers’ lobby organisation the EEF.
Britain and the EU: manufacturing an orderly exit, written with law firm Squire Patton Boggs, said that “EEF members argue that all UK health and safety legislation derived from EU directives should be grandfathered across when we exit the EU and then individually reviewed following exit.”
In her speech, May said “As we repeal the European Communities Act, we will convert the ‘acquis’ – that is, the body of existing EU law – into British law. When the Great Repeal Bill is given Royal Assent, parliament will be free – subject to international agreements and treaties with other countries and the EU on matters such as trade – to amend, repeal and improve any law it chooses. But by converting the acquis into British law, we will give businesses and workers maximum certainty. The same rules and laws will apply to them after Brexit as they did before”
Also at the conference, May said that the government would “publish our plans to have not just consumers represented on company boards, but workers as well.”
Taken from Health + Safety at Work November 2016 – The official magazine of the iirsm (International Institute of Risk and Safety Management)
