On 17 July 2025, the UK government published the latest “Assimilated Law Parliamentary Report” (“Report”) and “Assimilated Law dashboard” for the period December 2024 to June 2025. The publications fulfil the statutory duties under section 17 of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 (“2023 Act”) to publish frequent updates. In this post, Jack Williams of Monckton Chambers provides a brief overview of the Report and dashboard amendments.
The Report is available here, and the latest version of the dashboard is available here.
Notable takeaways include the following:
- The total number of pieces of assimilated law now stands at 6,911 instruments in approximately 400 policy areas. This is almost three times as many pieces of assimilated law as had been identified by the initial review concluding in June 2022.
- An additional 10 pieces of assimilated law were identified since the previous report in December 2024.
- Since the previous update, 137 assimilated law instruments have been revoked or reformed (taking the total to over 2,500). The government has achieved the revocations and reforms by means of 12 SIs using powers under the 2023 Act, and 29 under other pieces of domestic legislation.
- The Government has re-confirmed its decision in October 2023 (as discussed here) not to bring into force section 6 of the 2023 (with the consequential amendments to the test and processes for departing from assimilated case law, including the new reference process). Paragraph 29 of the Report specifically states that the Government is “taking the time to consider section 6 and [has] no immediate plans for its commencement”.
- Since the previous Report, no further restatements or codifications related to so-called “section 4 rights” have been made. Section 4 rights were those that were retained under section 4 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, but abolished under the 2023 Act from the end of 2023, subject to statutory powers to codify retained case law, section 4 rights, and other interpretive effects into UK law that would otherwise have fallen away. These preservation powers have rarely been used.
Share this post on social media: