REUL Bill Update (UK)

This Bill (in my blog before) is now before the House of Lords, today and on Wednesday, for its Report Stage (one of the last stages before Royal Assent).

The UK Government recently confirmed it would delete the 31st December 2023 sunset clause, and its extension date in 2026, except for a list of EU-era documents. This list is now published – it would be an inserted Schedule to the Bill.

Find here, the collated amendments to the Report Stage of the REUL Bill, including the contents of the proposed new Schedule (of deletions by 31st Dec 2023). Note: the UK Government (Lord Callanan) has also proposed to enable devolved governments to remove items from his proposed Schedule.

On this Schedule (list of deletions by 31st Dec 2023) – (assuming Royal Assent of the list as is) –

(1) Removal of Annex 8 to the UK CLP document – here is a link to EU ECHA on the purpose of Annex 8. The UK CLP document is a version of the EU-era CLP (Classification, Labelling and Packaging) Regulation.

(2) Deletion of recent changes to Annex 1 of the EU-era PIC Regulation – a 2019 local instrument made changes to Annex 1 but these are not showing on the legislation dot gov dot uk website, and so we will need to produce a Cardinal Environment text consolidation for this PIC document. Annex 1 lists the chemicals covered by the EU-era PIC Regulation.

(3) Deletion of various EU-era instruments regulating establishing standardised application information when GMOs are to be deliberately released to the market or the environment. The UK now has a Precision Breeding Act regulating PBOs (Precision Bred Organisms) as distinct from GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms). Under the new Act, the developer no longer “applies” but “notifies”. But developers still must “apply” under EU-era rules for the deliberate release of GMOs into the market/into the environment. It would appear DEFRA intends (by deleting the EU-era rules in this area) to change this to a “notification” process. The GMO register (of genetic modifications in GMOs) being lost in the REUL deletion process would be replaced by the PBO register under the Act. PBOs and GMOs would seemingly co-exist, in regulation terms.

The above would need to be achieved by issue of Statutory Instrument. Hopefully, further information will be available at that point.

We will amend the REUL List showing on client systems. and we will change the colour coding. However, we will retain the REUL List as a whole, since changes may occur to these EU-era rules over time, but not subject to a deadline.

Also note – the UK Government made two additional announcements (at the time of announcing the removal of the 31st Dec 2023 sunset deadline and it’s extension) –

(A) (EU-era) Working Time Regulations – these would be amended a bit, but the 48 hour week would be retained and also the combined leave provisions would still exceed the minimum in the EU.

(B) (EU-era) TUPE Regulations – these would be adjusted a bit. These rules are outside our remit.