Consumer rights, food and safety laws at risk of being scrapped under new legislation

Thousands of laws that were adopted when the UK was in the European Union could be scrapped at the end of this year, under a bill the government says will enable the UK to ‘take full advantage of the benefits of Brexit’.

The Retained EU Law Bill is currently progressing through Parliament. If it is passed, various laws concerning consumer rights, food and product safety could be automatically ‘sunsetted’ at the end of 2023, unless the government specifically chooses to keep or amend them.

Here, we outline what the bill is all about and why it is a risk for some fundamental protections. We also call for the government to change its approach and take the time to review and upgrade these regulations more thoroughly. 

What is the Retained EU Law Bill?

When the UK left the European Union in January 2020, thousands of pieces of legislation were carried over into UK law. The UK already had a wide range of legislation that stemmed from EU law.

The government is now planning through the Retained EU Law Bill to ‘sunset’ these laws, unless new law is adopted before then to keep or amend them.

This would make sense if the Bill was just cutting unnecessary ‘red tape’. In reality, it affects laws covering consumer rights, food standards, employment, health, environment, travel protection and product safety regulations. Some estimates place the number of affected laws at around 4,000. 

Some of the most significant themes are as follows:

• A large number of regulations relate to food standards, including hygiene requirements for food businesses, additive and pesticide and meat safety controls.
• Numerous regulations relate to product safety, including basic obligations for products placed on the market to be safe, safety of cosmetics and for warning labels to be included on toys. 
• Some affected consumer rights laws are fundamental to the way the economy operates. These include laws on misleading sales practices, cancellation rights, upfront information, hidden costs and consumers' ability to seek redress. 

Under the current plans, ministers and civil servants must assess every individual law before the end of 2023, deciding whether to keep, change or scrap it. If nothing is decided, laws will be ‘sunsetted’ automatically. 

Laws can not be updated under the Bill, even where there would be clear benefits to consumers or the wider economy of doing so, unless the update doesn't place any additional regulatory burden on businesses.

The Bill passed through the House of Commons earlier this month and will now face scrutiny in the House of Lords. 

Fears raised over weakening consumer protections

Concerns have been raised about whether the Bill is realistic. The legislation would require departments to select and transcribe any individual law they want to keep, potentially resulting in huge workloads for civil servants and vast amounts of legislation to get through Parliament before the sunset takes effect. 

There are fears that the huge workload means some important laws could be ‘missed’, resulting in them being automatically removed at the end of the year. 

The business community, which is supposed to benefit from the Bill, has also expressed doubts. The CBI says the Bill ‘risks throwing industry into some chaos just at the time we’re trying to exit recession’.

The wording of the Bill does provide some leeway for government departments. The sunset can be extended to 2026 by ministers under certain restricted circumstances.

Sunset clause should be removed

Which? believes the Bill puts a large number of consumer protections at risk. The scale of the task and timescales will also put serious strain on the civil service and regulators. In the worst case, ‘forgotten’ but important legislation could be unintentionally removed.

We believe the government should, at a minimum, remove the 2023 sunset clause and fall back on the 23 June 2026 sunset specified in the bill. 

Better still, the government could turn the 2026 sunset into a deadline for reviewing laws, rather than an automatic cut-off. 

This would put the emphasis on reviewing consumer rights and protections in an evidence-based way over a reasonable timeframe, to see what could be improved and modernised rather than removed.

We campaign to make life fairer, simpler and safer. From lead-free paint in children’s toys in the 1960s to seatbelts in cars in the 1980s, our campaigning has been leading the fight for consumer protection for 60 years. 

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