New laws to make it easier for the UK to align with EU rules as part of Sir Keir Starmer’s Brexit “reset” were first proposed by a think-tank led by Labour ex-prime minister Sir Tony Blair.
The King confirmed at the state opening of Parliament that the new Government “will seek to reset the relationship with European partners and work to improve the United Kingdom’s trade and investment relationship with the European Union”.
As part of this, the King’s Speech contained plans for new legislation that will make it easier for the UK to recognise and adopt new EU product safety laws to prevent businesses from being burdened with new costs and red tape.
Experts suggested the new laws would provide a mechanism for controversial “dynamic alignment” with EU rules to ease trade and could ease the path to bigger post-Brexit deals to boost the economy.
But critics warned that hitching the UK’s wagon to Brussels could damage the country’s leading role in areas like artificial intelligence (AI).
It marks a significant change of approach to Brexit from the last Conservative government, which tried to scrap all retained EU law after the UK left the bloc, although later abandoned the plans, and made a virtue of diverging rather than aligning with Brussels regulations.
It is the only specific mention of Brexit in the traditional list of new laws set out in the King’s Speech, because the Prime Minister must first negotiate new deals with the EU to achieve his wider aims of easing trade in food and agricultural products and signing a new security pact.
The new Government’s Product Safety and Metrology Bill will ensure the law can be changed to “recognise new or updated EU product regulations”, including the CE safety marking, which Rishi Sunak already committed to retaining in a Brexit climbdown to reduce bureaucracy for companies.
The laws will also ensure the UK can end the recognition of EU product regulations where diverging from Brussels rules “is in the best interests of UK businesses and consumers”.
The legislation has been drawn up because the Government believes the UK lacks the powers to respond to a range of updates and reforms being planned by the EU to product regulations.
But the recognition that aligning with new or updated EU laws “to prevent additional costs for businesses and provide regulatory stability” is a significant change in approach that could draw fire from hardcore Brexiteers.
As part of the attempts to agree a post-Brexit “reset”, the Government is likely to face demands from Brussels for measures that could prove unpalatable, such as a youth migration scheme. Any major move to grow closer to Brussels could prompt a backlash from other ministers, who are worried about alienating Leave voters who backed Labour at this month’s election.
The Bill gives the Government specific powers to make changes to legislation applying to Great Britain to match updated or new EU product safety law applying in Northern Ireland under the Windsor Framework Brexit deal to prevent trade barriers being erected between the two territories that form the UK.
Although the Prime Minister last year said”we don’t want to diverge” from EU rules or “lower standards”, the idea of voluntary alignment was first proposed by the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) in 2022, which said it was a “mistake” to think the UK could ignore Brussels rules.
Attempts to “move its laws entirely away” from the EU were “bound to fail” as regulators, businesses and courts would continue to take cues from and even follow Brussels law to continue trade with the continent, the think-tank said/
Calling for a “keeping-pace”-type power to be introduced by the Government, the TBI said allowing ministers to create secondary legislation to align with EU rules “would give businesses greater certainty about the regulatory environment, reinforce the government’s commitment to minimising differences with Northern Ireland and give a clearer direction to UK diplomats in Brussels, who have found it is much harder to influence the EU from the outside than the inside”.
Jill Rutter, of the Institute for Government, said the Bill appeared
“paves the way for voluntary alignment through the back door.”
It will make it easier to follow EU rules without having to pass primary legislation which is unwieldy and time consuming.
“It gives you a much easier mechanism for voluntary alignment if you want to do it, whether to reduce costs for business or ensure there is no divergence between the rules Northern Ireland has to follow and the rules for the rest of the UK.
“If you want to do dynamic alignment you need some sort of mechanism to do that.”
On potentially boosting EU relations, Rutter said “This move could be seen as a recognition that the EU is what some people in the Commission term a regulatory hegemon which wants to stay that way.”
The Bill will also allow the UK to respond to new product risks, including to keep up with technological advances, such as AI, and address challenges, such as the fire safety of e-bikes and lithium-ion batteries.
The laws will also improve protection for consumers, with the Government arguing it is too easy for unscrupulous overseas suppliers to place unsafe goods on the UK market through online marketplaces.
But Conservative leader Rishi Sunak warned the Government not to “impose new, potentially rigid legislation” that could “endanger” the UK’s “leading position” on AI safety.
A spokesman for the hardline Brexiteer Tory European Research Group added: “Eight years on from Brexit and Labour Remainers still have not realised that alignment with EU laws does not give you access to EU markets.
“If companies want to follow those laws to export, they can (like companies anywhere) use them without the need for UK regulations. However, they are decided in other states interests with no UK input and are often costly to jobs and consumers.
“The UK should make its own laws that suit its own needs, it’s what MPs are paid for.
“They may also surrender our lead on AI, to EU data laws and regulations, as the leader of the Opposition pointed out.”
This story has been updated.