UK parliament faces 'huge burden' of extra Brexit laws

The UK parliament faced the “huge burden” of having to pass up to 15 new Brexit-related laws, with “little space” for other legislation, the Institute for Government (IFG) said on Monday.

In a report, the IFG said government departments would need “ruthlessly to prioritise other legislation and indeed find non-legislative approaches to achieve policy aims where possible”.

This would be especially necessary in the context of the government’s narrow 15 seat commons majority, it added.

"Considerable time and resource will be soaked up and there will be precious little space left in the legislative programme for other legislation that departments might have wanted to see pass," the IFG said, noting that the average Queen's Speech, or legislative programme, usually contained 20 Bills.

The extra laws would be in addition to the Great Repeal Bill. This major piece of law will scrap the 1972 European Communities Act under which the UK entered the European Econonmic Community.

Royal Assent was given to the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill last week, giving Prime Minister Theresa May the authority to start talks on leaving the European Union after last June's referendum result.

May has pledged to trigger the process by the end of the month which will fire the starting gun on two years of tough negotiations. She set off on Monday for Wales to convince sceptical devolved administrations that they would be included in any talks on the Brexit outcome.

However, the IFG report said "there has been a complete lack of clarity about the role that the devolved legislatures will play in legislating for Brexit".

"The attitude that the Scottish National Party (SNP) takes to the passage of Brexit-related legislation in Westminster could affect the smoothness with which that legislation passes through Parliament if they join forces with the Labour Party and Conservative rebels," it added.

The paper warns the extent of legislative change required will inevitably lead to the government “using different routes to make Brexit-related changes” that are subject to less parliamentary scrutiny.

As a result, it should “resist the temptation to introduce non-essential changes in the repeal Bill”.

“Instead, the priority should be to copy across the acquis (the body of European Union law), which can be amended after Brexit,” the IFG said.

It also warned the government needed to avoid the risks associated with too little parliamentary scrutiny of Brexit, namely: "failure to identify unforeseen problems with proposed legislation and a lack of democratic legitimacy for the replacement regimes that the government introduces"

“To date there has been a complete lack of clarity about the role that the devolved legislatures will play in legislating for Brexit.”