Revocation of EU Law in the UK – the “Sunset Bill” – the latest position
As you will have read recently or heard on the news, the UK Government has made an important change to the draft Bill currently before Parliament which seeks to automatically revoke nearly all EU law by 31 December, 2023.
As originally framed the Bill in clause 1 stated that all EU-derived subordinate legislation and retained EU legislation are revoked with effect from 31 December, 2023 (the so called “Sunset clause”).
In an about-turn the government has now advised that EU law will remain binding in the UK unless the EU law is on the list of legislation to be revoked. That list has now been published. It is a rather mixed bag of regulations covering a variety of activities ranging from agriculture and food to energy efficiency, environmental issues and various tax agreements.
It has long been our concern that the draft Bill might see a significant dilution of EU derived employment rights. That, for the time being, appears to be an unfounded concern. There are virtually no employment related rights in the published list. For the time being therefore there does not appear to be any risk of EU derived employment rights being revoked.
That may yet change. The published list of revoked legislation is not written in stone and may be added to. We shall have to see.
For the moment we do not identify any changes to the UK employment law regime as a consequence of the Sunset Bill. We continue to monitor events and as and when there are further developments we will let you know.
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