REUL Bill Second Update

Author Punch Source Wikimedia Commons

 

Jane Lambert

I have already discussed this bill in Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill on 26 Oct 2022 and REUL Bill First Update on 6 Dec 2022,  It has now completed its passage through the House of Commons and will proceed to the House of Lords tomorrow.  The latest version of the bill can be read here.

Ahead of its second reading in the Lords, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which considers the policy effects of statutory instruments and other types of secondary legislation, has published Losing Control?: The Implications for Parliament of the retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill.  The members of the Committee (Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, The Earl of Lindsay, Lord De Mauley, Lord Lisvane, Lord German, Lord Powell of Bayswater, Viscount Hanworth, Lord Rowlands. Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, Baroness Watkins of Tavistock and Lord Hutton of Furness) have done so because they believe that the proposed legislation is an extreme example of a skeleton bill which would lead to a significant shift of power from Parliament to ministers.  

As their mandate is to scrutinize secondary legislation it is unusual for the Committee to report on primary legislation.  They explain that they have taken that exceptional step because they have power to consider “general matters relating to the effective scrutiny of secondary legislation” which this bill is likely to affect.

Their concern with the sunset clauses is that important legislation may disappear inadvertently from the statute book. They fear that ministers and their officials may simply overlook important provisions.  They add that there is no machinery for MPs to intervene on behalf of concerned constituents.  As to the proposed power of ministers to amend EU regulations and directives by statutory instrument, they call for an amendment of the bill to enable Parliament as a whole to amend important legislative instruments.  They call for explanatory memoranda to be produced on every piece of legislation likely to lapse or be modified.

The Bar Council, which had previously briefed peers on the bill, welcomes the Committee's report. In his press release Retained EU Law Bill will damage UK’s reputation, says Bar Council of 3 Feb 2023  the Chair of the Bar warned that "the bill in its present form, will damage the UK’s reputation for regulatory stability, predictability, and competence on which growth-promoting investment in critical sectors of our economy depends."

Anyone wishing to discuss this article may call me on +44 (0)20 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form.

REUL Bill First Update

Intellectual Property Office

Crown Copyrights  Open Government Licence

 

Jane Lambert

In Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill (26 Oct 2022), I mentioned the introduction and second reading of that bill.  In that article, I wrote that the purpose of the bill s to enable the government to remove the special features of retained European Union law ("REUL") from the English and Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish legal systems by the end of 2023.  I added that the bill if passed was likely to affect intellectual property law in the United Kingdom because much of that law implements EU legislation and case law.  For that reason, I offered to follow the progress of the bill and its application to intellectual property law.

According to the UK Parliament's website, the bill has completed the report stage and is now at the report stage.  A copy of the bill as amended in committee can be found here.   Anyone interested in what was said in Parliament about the bill can consult Hansard here.

On 29 Nov 2022, the Intellectual Property Office published updated guidance on the bill.   It consists of a list of retained EU law, as defined in s. 6 (7) of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.  Such law relates to intellectual property within the policy remit of the IPO and does not address issues that lie outside such as plant varieties or rights arising at common law.  The list covers copyrights, designs, patents, trade marks and enforcement.  Readers will see that it is quite long enough.

I shall continue to monitor the progress of the bill and report any other useful materials on the topic that come to my attention.  In the meantime, anyone who is interested in the topic may call me on +44 (0)20 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill - Index Page

Author O Flammger London (Stengel & Co. Dresden)
Source Wikipedia, The Palace of Westminster

Jane Lambert

On 19 Oct 2019 HM Government negotiated a draft agreement on the terms of the UK's withdrawal from the European Union and a political declaration setting out the framework for the UK's future relationship with the EU in accordance with art 50 (2) of the Treaty on European Union which I discussed in The Revised Draft Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on 21 Oct 2019.  The UK will leave the EU in accordance with art 50 (3) of the Treaty when this Agreement comes into effect.  In order to come into effect, the agreement must be ratified by the UK Parliament.

A bill to ratify the agreement known as the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill was introduced in the last Parliament which I discussed in the European Union (Withdrawal Bill on 22 Oct 2019.  The Bill received a second reading but MPs could not accept the very tight time limits for debate in a programme motion. The Bill was withdrawn and a general election was held in which the public was given a choice between parties with very different positions on brexit.  The Conservatives favoured withdrawal on the terms of the draft agreement, the Labour Party favoured negotiating an alternative agreement the terms of which were to be put to the public in a second referendum, the Liberal Democrats favoured withdrawing the notice to quit the EU and the Brexit Party favoured leaving the EU with no withdrawal agreement at all.

The election was won by the Conservative Party which introduced a new European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill on 19 Dec 2019.  The new Bill was similar but not identical to the previous one and I discussed those similarities and differences in European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill Second Time Around on 22 Dec 2019.  That Bill received its second reading on 20 Dec 2019 (see Hansard 2nd reading) and is now in committee.  To assist readers to follow the progress of the legislation I have created an index page on the Bill which will be updated regularly.  Readers may wish to bookmark this page and return to it from time to time until the Bill becomes law.

Anyone wishing to discuss this article or brexit generally may call me on +44 (0)20 7404 5252 or get in touch through my contact page.

Brexit Briefing - January 2018

Michel Barnier

Author Foto-AG Gymnasium Melle
 Licence CC BY-SA 3.0
Source Wikimedia Commons

Jane Lambert

The month started quietly with a period of contemplation on the terms of the interim agreement on citizens' rights, the Irish border and the financial contribution and ended in a ruckus with BuzzFeed's publication of a leaked government memo that predicted bad outcomes for every type of Brexit (see Alberto Nardelli This Leaked Government Brexit Analysis Says The UK Will Be Worse Off In Every Scenario 29 Jan 2018 BuzzFeed). That led to ministers' dissing their own civil servants and a back bench Tory MP accusing HM Treasury of all kinds of skulduggery.

That same back bencher provided the only drama of the month when he asked the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union whether the UK would be a vassal state between 29 March 2019 and 31 Dec 2020 at a hearing of the House of Commons Select Committee on Exiting the European Union on 24 Jan 2018 (see  Will the UK be a Vassal State during the Implementation Period? 30 Jan 2018). Surprisingly Mr Davis came close to admitting to the committee that it would though only for a short period. Mrs May subsequently intervened to say that we would not admit new arrivals from the EU member states on the same terms as before and that we would seek a new mechanism to challenge any new laws that would harm our interests.

As to the relationship that will subsist between Britain and the EU after the 31 Dec 2020, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Brexit called for "a new economic partnership with the EU – the most ambitious in the world – that recognises the extraordinary levels of interconnectedness and cooperation that already exist between us" in a joint article for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung." To continental eyes that looks very like cherry picking or having your cake and eating it.  Michel Barnier anticipated that speech and warned

"A country leaving this very precise framework and the accompanying supervision gains the ability to diverge from it but by the same token loses the benefits of the Internal Market. Its financial service providers can no longer enjoy the benefits of a passport to the Single Market nor those of a system of generalised equivalence of standards."

In other words we can have a free trade agreement and it may even have some provisions for the supply of services but it will fall far short of the frictionless trade conditions that we now enjoy (see Davis and Barnier set out their Negotiating Strategies for the Next Phase of Brexit Talks 11 Jan 2018).

On 17 Dec 2017 Daniel Alexander QC, Chair of the Intellectual Property Bar Association, together with the Chair of the IP Law Committee of the Law Society of England and Wales and the Presidents of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, the Chartered Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys ("CIPA") and the IP Federation, signed a memorandum to the Government entitled Intellectual property (IP) law and Brexit Summary of main requests for the UK government a copy of which can be downloaded from the CIPA website (see IP and Brexit - Key Requests to Government).  One of those requests is ratification and continued UK participation in the Unified Patent Court but that looks increasingly unlikely as exit day approaches. The question for now is what if anything can be salvaged from the UPC Agreement. I wrote about that topic on 26 Jan 2018 in NIPC Law and I am due to talk about it to Queen Mary University London on 12 Feb 2018 (see Implications of Brexit on Intellectual Property Law 19 Jan 2018 NIPC Law).

Anyone wishing to discuss this article or Brexit in general should call me on +44 (0)29 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form.