‘Benefits of Brexit’: Queen’s Speech 2022

This bill will make it easier for the government to change inherited EU law without the need for primary legislation, which – unlike secondary legislation – has to go through multiple parliamentary votes.

This bill was first hinted at by Lord Frost in 2021, and was formally announced in January 2022, two years after the UK left the EU. This is the only Brexit bill which will not itself change regulation – instead changing how ministers can amend, repeal or replace the EU legislation that was incorporated into UK law after Brexit – and making it easier for them to push forward new policies in these areas.

This bill will revoke retained EU law on financial services, steer financial regulators to focus more on economic growth, and provide more protections against financial scams.

Despite promises to make decisions by June 2020, the EU has still not granted the UK equivalence on the overwhelming majority of financial services, even though the UK still applies EU rules (and despite a more liberal approach being adopted by the UK).

This bill will enshrine the government’s objectives for public procurement in law and require public bodies to ‘have regard to’ its priorities.

It will enable small contracts to be restricted to UK suppliers, create new systems such as a single digital platform for supplier registration and allow more scrutiny of poor procurement.

Government began consulting on public procurement regulatory reform in 2020 and a bill to ‘simplify’ procedures was also mentioned in the 2021 Queen’s Speech.^[5] This bill shows changes to public procurement are still in progress, despite government using its January Brexit white paper to say reform had been achieved.

The UK is diverging from EU law, which set tight frameworks on public procurement.^[6] But UK procurement policy must comply with trade agreements with the WTO, EU and others, which generally stop public bodies favouring UK suppliers. For example, the government’s reforms would restrict small contracts to UK suppliers,as permitted by WTO law – but otherwise most changes will apply to all international suppliers.

The UK data regime still reflects the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – which was transferred into UK law as retained EU law – and so the UK was granted ‘data adequacy’ by the EU, allowing easy cross-border data flows. Data adequacy is up for renewal in 2025, but could also be revoked by the EU at very short notice if circumstances change (or immediately if the EU considers it urgent).

With the newly negotiated FTAs requiring increased access for NZ and Australian firms to UK government contracts (and vice versa) – such as requiring all public procurement documents to be accessible in those countries online – the UK is having to introduce legislation to support that.

This bill will amend genetic modification (GM) regulation to make gene editing (modifications “that could have arisen through traditional breeding or natural processes”) easier. 

These reforms were highlighted as a flagship Brexit policy in Boris Johnson’s first speech as prime minister and framed as part of the UK’s global leadership in innovation.^[9]

Following the government consultation in 2021, this bill will remove gene editing from the blanket ban on all forms of genetic modification in retained EU law.^[10]