LONDON, May 10 — Britain no longer intends to remove all European Union laws by the end of 2023 and instead will amend the retained EU law (REUL) bill to clarify the laws it intends to revoke this year, the government said.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson said in January the government would not extend an end-of-year deadline to replace all the European Union laws that were retained after Britain left the bloc in 2020.

But today, business and trade minister Kemi Badenoch said that rather than automatically revoking almost all retained EU law, the government would amend the bill to propose to revoke only about 600 out of around 4,000 retained EU laws.

"Today the Government is tabling an amendment... which will replace the current sunset in the Bill with a list of the retained EU laws that we intend to revoke under the Bill at the end of 2023,” Badenoch said in a ministerial statement.

"This provides certainty for business by making it clear which regulations will be removed from our statue book, instead of highlighting only the REUL that would be saved.”

Badenoch said that 1,000 EU laws had already been revoked or reformed since Britain left the EU in 2020, and a financial services bill would revoke a further 500 pieces of retained law. — Reuters