Steve Baker visits The National Archives
Steve Baker visits The National Archives to discuss their preparations for EU exit.
Minister at the Department for Exiting the EU, Steve Baker, today visited The National Archives to see how they are creating a new archive for EU law in preparation for our exit from the European Union in March 2019.
The EU (Withdrawal) Act, which received Royal Assent last week, ends the supremacy of EU law by converting it into UK law on exit day. It also allows the Government to make changes to retained EU law that will no longer be relevant after we leave the EU.
As part of that process, The National Archives are creating a new web archive which will capture the full body of EU law as it stood on exit day. This will provide an important record to refer back to, as the Government goes about making changes to retained EU legislation.
During his visit, the Minister met with The National Archives Chief Executive and Queen’s Printer, Jeff James, and Digital Director, John Sheridan, who gave the Minister a tour of the archive.
Minister for Exiting the EU, Steve Baker said:
We reached a historic moment in our journey out of the European Union last month as the EU (Withdrawal) Act became law.
We are now well on our way to ending the supremacy of EU law in the UK, a process which The National Archives will play an important role in documenting.
I was pleased to visit the Archives today to learn more about how they will be creating an archive of EU law after our exit next year and to hear about the new tools they have in place to ensure that the full body of EU law as it stood on exit day remains accessible to the general public.
The National Archives Chief Executive, Jeff James said:
We were pleased to welcome Minister Steve Baker to The National Archives today to show him the fantastic work our teams are doing keep legislation.gov.uk up to date and in improving the functionality and search-ability of the government web archive.
As the official publisher of UK legislation and the official archive of the UK Government, The National Archives is committed to supporting departments in ensuring continued legal certainty and transparency through publishing our laws online.
The EU (Withdrawal) Act received Royal Assent on Monday 26 June. The Government has now embarked on its secondary legislation programme to prepare our statute book for exit.