18 May 2023

On 10 May 2023, the Government announced that the ‘sunset’ clause of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, under which all retained EU law not restated by 31 December 2023 would have been revoked, was to be removed from the draft and replaced with an inverse provision: that all retained EU law would continue in force unless expressly repealed. A schedule of around 600 laws which will be repealed on 31 December 2023 has been prepared; on any estimate, this represents a small proportion of retained EU law.

It appears that in at least some significant instances, the Government will be content to modify retained EU law rather than repealing it. The Government has made a statement of its legislative intentions in the employment law arena with the Department for Business and Trade’s policy paper Smarter Regulation to Grow the Economy (also published on 10 May 2023), which sets out a number of policy proposals which would not have been possible before Brexit. These include changes to statutory holiday entitlements, the TUPE regulations and the enforceability periods of non-compete covenants. You can read our overview of the possible changes to the law here.

While these proposed changes to the UK’s employment legislation are significant, they represent an attempt to rectify perceived problems with – rather than simply to scrap – retained EU law. Taken along with the removal of the ‘sunset’ clause, this would appear to indicate that a substantial continuity in UK employment law beyond the end of 2023 is much more likely than the previous drafting of the Retained EU Law Bill allowed.

How we can help

For further information on the possible implications of any of these proposed changes to UK employment legislation, please contact the team at Synchrony Law.

This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal or professional advice. Please note that the law may have changed since this article was published.