Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
The UK Statistics (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2021
Letter from the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery to the Convener, 7 October 2021
Dear Clare
I wrote back in August to obtain the approval of the Scottish Parliament to consent to the making of UK secondary legislation affecting devolved areas arising from EU Exit in relation to the above regulations.
We now have sight of the final SI, and I can confirm that it is in keeping with the draft shared with the previous notification. None of the amendments impact on devolved matters. I have appended a summary of the minor changes in the final version for your information.
Yours sincerely,
John Swinney
Annex 1 – Summary of changes to the SI
• The removal of a handful of EU regulations on trade statistics, following discussion with HMRC (who have already legislated to ‘fix’ those).
• The removal of a handful of EU regulations that although were in force prior to IP completion day, did not meet the criteria of retained EU law because they did not apply until after IP completion day.
• The inclusion of a handful of EU regulations based on discussion with HMT/BoE.
• A Bank of England Act 1998 saving amendment has been included in Regulation 7 – a very minor addition to preserve a definition used in financial legislation.
• The addition of the use of powers in the Withdrawal Agreement Act 2020 to update references to ‘exit day’ to ‘IP completion day’ in one Act and four pieces of secondary legislation (Regulations 2-6). The regulations were already included but the power has changed.