Ministry of Justice: Brexit

(asked on 13th December 2022) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment they have made of the impact of the UK's departure from the EU on their ability to deliver successful policy outcomes.


Answered by
Mike Freer Portrait
Mike Freer
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
This question was answered on 21st December 2022

Leaving the EU has provided the UK with the freedom to conceive and implement laws and policies that put the UK first. At the start of this year, the Government set out its plans to maximise the benefits of Brexit across each major sector of the economy and transform the UK into the best regulated country in the world.

Leaving the EU has also meant that the UK is free to pursue its own independent trade policy and trade agreements. The Ministry of Justice represents the UK legal sector’s interests overseas by improving and maintaining market access for UK lawyers practicing internationally by securing legal services provisions in Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). Since leaving the EU we have secured legal services provisions in a number of FTAs including with Australia and New Zealand. We will continue to seek world leading provisions on legal services in ongoing and upcoming FTA negotiations where this will deliver benefit to the UK legal services sector.

I am also actively engaging with key stakeholders in the sector both at home and abroad, including the Law Society of England and Wales, the Law Society of Scotland, the American Bar Association, and law firms across the UK, to understand the sector’s priorities. This is to ensure that we [HMG] are working effectively with the sector to remove barriers to trade in legal services and to increase UK legal services exports globally.

The UK is a global leader in Private International Law (PIL) and outside the EU we have now regained competence in PIL matters. Private International Law arrangements support the confidence of businesses to trade and invest across borders, underpinning economic growth and access to justice.

That is why we are taking advantage of new freedoms to sign agreements and seek opportunities to strengthen arrangements with our international partners. The government has published a consultation on whether the UK should be party to the Hague 2019 convention on Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgements and in due course we will be publishing the government response to the consultation on whether the UK should sign and ratify the 2018 Singapore Convention on Mediation to support our world-leading mediation sector.

Reticulating Splines