Beyond Brexit

UK Government

Queen’s Speech - Brexit Freedoms Bill - 10 May 2022

The Queen’s Speech has been delivered by Prince Charles at the Opening of Parliament, setting out the government’s legislative agenda for the next parliamentary session.

The speech touched on three bills that will be of interest to financial market participants: the Retained EU Law Bill, also known as the Brexit Freedoms Bill; the Financial Services and Markets Bill; and the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill. The Financial Services and Markets Bill the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill are covered in the General and Financial Crime sections of this Bulletin respectively.

The Retained EU Law Bill (the Bill) will “enable law inherited from the European Union to be more easily amended”. The main elements of the Bill are:

• creating new powers to strengthen the ability to amend, repeal or replace retained EU law by reducing “the need to always use primary legislation to do so” and modernising the UK’s approach to making regulation;
• removing the supremacy of retained EU law over UK law and ensuring that EU-derived law no longer takes priority over Acts of Parliament; and
• clarifying the status of retained EU law in UK law to “reflect the fact that much of it become law without going through full democratic scrutiny in the UK Parliament”.

The government comments that the Bill, which will extend and apply across the UK, will significantly reduce the amount of time needed to make retained EU legislation fit for the UK, meaning that the government can more quickly implement the benefits of Brexit.

Queen’s Speech 2022

Briefing pack