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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether he has taken steps to review the corpus of retained EU law and other UK regulations for the purposes of (a) identifying potential negative impact on (i) trade and (ii) competition and (b) prioritising for change those for which a potential negative impact is identified; what estimate he has made of the time it will take to complete such a review; and whether he plans to bring forward legislative proposals to implement changes identified.

The Department is supporting the Government’s review into retained EU Law, which will provide an authoritative assessment of where retained EU law is concentrated on the statute book and assist the consideration of future legislative requirements. The recently published ‘Benefits of Brexit: how the UK is taking advantage of leaving the EU’ policy paper announced that the Government intends to amend, replace, or repeal all the retained EU law that is not right for the UK and prioritise areas where reform can deliver the greatest economic gain, with the Government aiming to cut £1 billion of business costs from retained EU red tape.

My Rt hon Friend the Prime Minister has also announced that the Government will bring forward a Brexit Freedoms Bill to make it easier to remove or amend retained EU law in the future.