New laws to make it easier for the UK to align with EU rules as part of Sir Keir Starmer’sThe 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”.
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. 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.
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 in 2022, which said it was a “mistake” to think the UK could ignore Brussels rules.