Budget Statement (UK)

Yesterday 17 November 2022 saw the UK Government make a budget statement. The following are announcements of interest –

(1) Deletion of Retained EU Law (REUL) – a bill is in progress to delete a significant body of law off the statute books by the end of 2023 (I have blog posted about this a number of times already).

The Budget Statement asserts “the government is committed to reforming retained EU law”. The Statement states 5 areas will be reviewed over the next year, comprising “life sciences”, “green industries”, and “ advanced manufacturing” (along with “financial services”, and “digital technology”).

In addition, the government will task Sir Patrick Vallance to advise on how to regulate “emerging technologies”.

(2) Climate Change Levy (CCL) – the rates will be rebalanced, the CCL rate on gas will be raised, and the CCL rate on electricity will be frozen. These steps will take effect in the Finance Bill 2023. The percentage discount on the CCL main rates available through the Climate Change Agreement Scheme will be fixed at 92% for electricity and 77% for LPG. The discounts for gas and solid fuels will be adjusted to 89%.

(3) Carbon Price Support (CPS) – CPS rates in Britain will be kept at a level equivalent to £18 per tonne of carbon dioxide in 2024-2025.

EU Law Revocation (Britain) Update

The Financial Times is reporting this morning that a further large number of EU laws has been located by the National Archives. The report is that the end 2023 deadline for revocation of REUL (retained EU law) is now likely to slip, as the scale of the work challenge to replace or reform each instrument builds.

The Bill is currently in Committee stage, as currently drafted Ministers could delay until June 2026, but both dates of December 2023 and June 2026 could now change.

We will nonetheless, list the instruments that will be affected, and load this onto Cardinal Environment Limited EHS Legislation Registers & Checklists in January 2023. We will track the changes to this list and the development of replacement or reformed instruments by using the traffic light system, the same approach we used for the Brexit Consolidated Law project (which is concluded).

I will write further Updates (Blog posts) as more information becomes available on the revocation of REUL.