On 3 July 2019 the Under Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, James Cleverley MP, made a written ministerial statement confirming that the Queen’s Printer’s duties and powers to publish European legislation under Schedule 5 paragraph 1 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (c 16) had been brought into force.

The National Archives have now released two new services:

  • https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/eu-exit/: this new EU Exit Web Archive is a comprehensive archive of a wide range of legislative materials in English, French and German. This includes Treaties, legislative acts, the Official Journal of the European Union and other supporting materials, and judgements of the European Court of Justice. This archive will continue to be maintained until exit, at which point it will stand as a permanent record of EU law as it stood when the UK left the EU.
  • They have added legislation originating from the EU to legislation.gov.uk.  They have also  published details about the amendments to EU legislation from the EU and, crucially, the corrective amendments made by UK legislation in preparation for exit. This new collection of EU legislation will continue to be maintained with new content from EUR-Lex until the point of exit, at which point they will maintain the UK versions of the legislation, with amendments incorporated into the texts.

These services, combined, represent a major leap forward in the accessibility of legislation in the UK, and will play a key role in aiding legal certainty and supporting legal research as the United Kingdom leaves the European Union.

One further thing to note – regular users of legislation.gov.uk may need to refresh their browser by pressing Ctrl-F5 in order to see the new layout properly.

Note that ICLR.3 provides users of our online case law database with instant access to UK legislation via the Full Search page :  just select Legislation at the top of the search box. The fields replicate those on the www.legislation.gov.uk website and the web content is delivered directly to ICLR.3. (You can also print a PDF of the legislation or the part of it shown, which is delivered directly from the National Archives site.)

The EU Exit Web Archive is not currently incorporated into the ICLR.3 platform, however we will be adding it in due course.