The Retreat From Anarchy
One of the problems with the Retained EU Law Bill is that no one really knows how many laws that originated from the EU are due to be repealed. You might be forgiven for thinking that there is simply one, single list kept by the government and that at the end of 2023 all of those instruments would simply vanish from the statute book.
In fact what counts as an ‘EU-derived subordinate legislation’ is not really specific or clear so while the estimate is around 4,000 documents, the actual number might be much higher or lower. Needless to say, this is not a responsible way to legislate and it was always unlikely that the proposals would get very far in their current state.
At the end of last week, The Guardian reported that the number of repeals has been slashed down to 800 following a meeting between the Secretary of State for Trade, Kemi Badenoch, and the European Research Group, a collection of highly Eurosceptic MPs.
It is hard to imagine that those MPs were happy with the decision but if the Bill was going to stand any chance of getting through the House of Lords when it returns to Parliament in a couple of weeks then this seems like a necessary concession.
Despite this move, there is no guarantee that the more restrained version of this legislation will still find a way to Royal Assent. After all, the Bill would still hand over a huge amount of power to ministers and the 800 or so laws that would disappear overnight would impinge on some important rights and protections.
To be sure, the change is welcome compared to the anarchic tearing up of the statute book that we might have witnessed otherwise but this legislation is still far from perfect and much more scrutiny and analysis is need to work out what the impact will eventually be.
This week on the podcast we explore the ongoing saga of vicarious liability. The law in this area has not been settled for some time now as the courts struggle to get to grips with the circumstances when a defendant should be liable. In this episode we discuss the difficulty of getting the balance right between keeping limits on the law while also delivering justice for victims.
Episode link: http://uklawweekly.com/2023-uksc-15/
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