Request
I write in relation to reports that the National Archives was commissioned by HM Government to identify retained EU law regulations which may be affected by the Retained EU Law Bill (Revocation and Reform).
I would like to request under the FOI Act details of:
1) What retained EU law the National Archives has identified which has the word a) ‘consumer’ or b) ‘safety’ in the title of the regulation?
2) During this exercise, on what date was any of the legislation under my first question shared with officials in Government departments?
Outcome
No information held.
Response
As the official publisher of all UK legislation (including EU Law which is required to be published under Schedule 5 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018), The National Archives holds data on all legislation published on legislation.gov.uk. As part of our efforts to provide assistance to colleagues across government, we have provided access to some of this data to assist departments in refining their analysis of legislation that might be impacted by the Retained EU Law Bill. For example, by allowing them to exclude any piece of legislation that we know is no longer in force.
The National Archives’ role is to provide information to Departments to support them in making their policy decisions, but is not involved in deciding either the UK Government’s policy concerning Retained EU Law, or which pieces of legislation Departments should be including on the Retained EU Law dashboard, and therefore we do not hold information relating to this. We recommend that you direct any such request to BEIS: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/contact-beis
I would like to request under the FOI Act details of:
1) What retained EU law the National Archives has identified which has the word a) ‘consumer’ or b) ‘safety’ in the title of the regulation?
The advanced search feature on legislation.gov.uk does allow anyone to identify any piece of published EU law that contains the words ‘consumer’ and/or ‘safety’ in their title, however The National Archives is not responsible for identifying which pieces of legislation are retained.
Throughout the process of the retained EU law substance review, The National Archives has been working closely with HMG. The National Archives was commissioned to conduct a review of their databases, in order for HMG to identify supplementary pieces of retained EU law and cross check this against the retained EU law dashboard. Officials across Government are working with The National Archives going forward to verify the data provided by The National Achieves and ensure all relevant legislation is accounted for ahead of the December 2023 sunset. The outcome of this exercise will be published via future iterations of the retained EU law dashboard throughout 2023. Link to the retained EU Law dashboard can be found using the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/retained-eu-law-dashboard
2) During this exercise, on what date was any of the legislation under my first question shared with officials in Government departments?
By virtue of not holding any lists of EU retained law, we cannot answer this question.
Explanatory annex
Please see the following links to our FOI transparency pages, for details about recent FOI requests concerning REUL:
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/freedom-of-information/information-requests/list-of-1400-eu-laws/
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/freedom-of-information/information-requests/legislation-data-provided-to-beis-bou/