Once we leave the EU, there will be areas of law where policy no longer operates as intended. This is the case where legislation would continue to work legally and can be complied with, but where the policy outcome delivered by that legislation might cease to make sense.

For example, this will happen where preserved legislation will continue to require the UK to send information to EU institutions (or offices, bodies or agencies) or EU member states. The UK would still be able to comply with such requirements in legislation to send information where there would be no legal barrier to doing so (i.e. the law would still function). However, where the UK had not explicitly agreed during exit negotiations to continue to provide such information to the EU, there may well be reasons why the UK would no longer wish to send such information after we exit the EU, and where it would make sense to amend the legislation to avoid previously reciprocal arrangements becoming one-sided.

An example of this would be the requirement for the UK to provide the European Commission with data relating to inland waterways transport as set out in Regulation 1365/20 06. ⁷ In this case where the law no longer functions as intended, the power would allow the Government to amend or repeal these preserved regulations to reflect that such an arrangement only exists if it is in the UK’s interest.

Of course in some cases we may want to exchange data with the EU, for example, for security matters.