In late 2022, the Government announced its intention, as part of Brexit, to remove EU laws from the statute books. In its initial incarnation, this was to be a removal of a large majority of the retained EU law, to be implemented by the end of 2023. However, last month, the Government tabled amendments to the bill, which made significant changes to the “sunset clause”. The bill now contains a list of around 600 pieces of legislation which will be revoked, all other EU laws will remain in force.
The UK GDPR and PECR 2023 (EU derived legislation) are not listed in the schedule and so we conclude that these pieces of legislation will remain on the statute books; not an unsurprising turn of events, but one which has been left rather late in the day. It is worth noting that there remains a power for the Government to revoke, restate, replace and update the EU law which remains in force, which extend into 2026 and so this is not necessarily the last word on the matter.
The bill is now in its final stages. The text of the bill can be found here.
