Tucked away on page 33 of the government’s ‘Benefits of Brexit’ report, published on Monday, are two proposals whose consequences could be anti-democratic and destabilising to the UK. They claim to offer a solution to the complex problem of disentangling domestic law from EU law, but their likely effect will be to hand unaccountable power to ministers and to introduce chaos to our legal system.
During the Brexit debate, neither side wanted to dwell on how integrated UK law had become with EU law. Brexiters didn’t want the process of leaving to seem anything other than simple and straightforward, while Remainers were unwilling to be frank about the extent to which EU rules had become so enmeshed in the law governing our daily lives. This was often in technical areas, but also in areas of great day-to-day importance, such as environmental protection, consumer law, employment rights and health and safety.
The process of disentangling these laws was always going to be complicated, demanding a huge amount of governmental and parliamentary time. When Brexit finally happened, the plan at first was to avoid the problem where possible. Apart from in key areas such as the rights of free movement, the EU Withdrawal Act 2018 aimed to keep hold of much EU law, making only those changes that were needed for it to operate in the UK – such as transferring the powers of EU regulators to domestic ones.
