Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make an estimate of what the cost to businesses was of complying with EU regulations under each Government Department between 2001 and 2015; and how much and what proportion of those costs were from regulations which the UK was obligated to follow as a condition of its membership of the EU and which were deemed out of scope for repeal.

The Government does not hold this information centrally and on a fully comparable basis, as legislation to implement obligations arising from EU regulations, decisions and directives was exempt from the Better Regulation scrutiny process.

However, going forwards the Retained EU Law (REUL) programme and related departmental appraisals will seek to assess the costs to business from changes to REUL as it currently stands. This appraisal may provide suggestive evidence on retrospective costs prior to EU withdrawal.