Employment Law, Brexit and the EU: What’s Happening?
Employment Law Update By Kate Palka
The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act (REUL) is intended to end the special status of retained EU law within the UK’s legal system. It gives ministers powers to revoke, amend or replace retained EU laws more easily.
REUL ceased to exist as a special category of domestic law on 1 January 2024. Any REUL (6,757 laws) which remained on the UK statute book became ‘assimilated law’.
Parliament will go through it all to revoke and reform. It publishes a dashboard, and a six-monthly report until June 2026. The latest one is dated 22 January 2024. Nearly 67% of REUL (nearly 67%) remains unchanged.
The REUL reform report sets out a roadmap to revoke or reform half of all REUL by June 2026.
The Government has described the changes it has made to REUL concerning employment rights (and the wine sector) as “key reforms”. Nonetheless, most regulations made under the REUL Act in 2023 have not led to substantive policy changes.
In employment law the Government has, to date, made amendments to the Working Time Regulations and the TUPE Regs, simplifying annual leave and holiday pay calculations. You can see our employment update on that here.
Retained regulations
The regulations to be retained:
- Maternity and Parental Leave etc Regulations 1999
- Paternity and Adoption Leave Regulations 2002
- Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000
- Fixed-term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002
- The Agency Workers Regulations 2010
- Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004
- The Working Time Regulations 1998 and the TUPE regulations (with the exception of recent changes)
Amended regulations
Regulations to be changed:
- Removing the record-keeping requirements under the WTR 1998;
- Reforming the consultation requirements under the TUPE regulations for smaller businesses;
- Simplifying annual leave and holiday pay calculations in the WTR 1998.
Get in touch
Explore our employment law resources on the Insights page of our website and download the Your People guide for advice on how to implement a living people strategy in your business.
And if you’d like to get the help of a TLD Client Legal Director to analyse and address all legal matters in your business, please contact us on info@thelegaldirector.co.uk or 020 3056 8538.
