Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent progress has been made on his Department’s preparations for the UK leaving the EU.

BEIS is leading one of the largest programmes of EU exit deliver across government. We have recruited 700 new staff to work on EU Exit Policy.

We are in the process of delivering a huge secondary legislation programme to ensure a functioning statute book on exit day. As of today, BEIS has laid 62 exit related statutory instruments, including new laws for a nuclear safeguards regime that will maintain the UK industry’s ability to trade in the nuclear sector while ensuring the UK remains on track to meet its international obligations on day one of exit, and plan to lay the remaining instruments by the end of this month.

We have also published 28 technical notices, including on oil and gas, climate change, company law and state aid. These will continue to be updated.

BEIS also continues to work closely with the rest of government on EU Exit issues, to ensure a cohesive approach is taken to support businesses. BEIS has contributed to cross-government information programmes, such as helping to develop the EU Exit business Q&A tool, which was been used over 20,000 times.

BEIS continues to meet with key stakeholders across all sectors to inform our approach and will continue to use their expertise. For example, we have met with over 3,000 businesses to date.