Medicinal and agrochemical products can be granted a Supplementary Protection Certificate, an intellectual property right associated with patents, to provide up to five years of additional rights and protections once their patents have expired. In order to apply for an SPC, a product must receive approval to be sold on the UK market. Under the Northern Ireland/Ireland Protocol, products to be sold in Northern Ireland must obtain approval under EU law, whilst products to be sold in the rest of the UK will obtain approval under UK law. Currently, this marketing authorisation is only given on a UK-wide basis. This regulation amends the market authorisation process to enable authorisations to be granted for the Northern Ireland market only and for the Great Britain market only.
Documents to download
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Publishing Government Legal Advice (231 KB, PDF)
In the UK, law officers of the crown are responsible for providing legal advice to the government. Successive governments have observed a long-standing convention that the advice they receive from law officers is not disclosed outside government. This House of Lords Library Briefing provides a brief overview of the role of the law officers and the convention on the publication of their advice. It also gives examples of how the Government has referred to the convention in response to calls for it to make public the full advice that it had received from law officers. The final section discusses demands for the Government to publish the legal advice that it has been given regarding Brexit.
Over recent weeks, there have been repeated calls—including from Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and a former Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union—for the Government to publish in full the legal advice it has received about its proposed Brexit deal. On 13 November 2018, a binding motion for a return was agreed without division in the House of Commons, calling for “any legal advice in full, including that provided by the Attorney General, on the proposed withdrawal agreement on the terms of the UK’s departure from the European Union including the Northern Ireland backstop and framework for a future relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union” to be laid before Parliament.
The Government published a “full reasoned position statement” setting out its legal position on the Brexit deal on 3 December 2018—the day before the Commons began its debate that will culminate in the ‘meaningful vote’ on the deal—and the Attorney General made a statement and took oral questions in the Commons. However, on 4 December 2018 the House of Commons narrowly voted in favour of finding the Government in contempt of Parliament for failing to comply with the 13 November motion, and ordered the Government to publish the Attorney General’s full legal advice immediately. The following day, the Government published the advice that the Attorney General had presented to Cabinet on 14 November 2018 on the legal effect of the withdrawal agreement. The Government argued that this should not set a precedent for any future release of law officers’ advice.
Documents to download
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Publishing Government Legal Advice (231 KB, PDF)
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The Audiovisual Media Services (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 govern how on-demand programming and video-sharing platforms will be regulated after the Brexit transition period ends.
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The regulation of product safety, and weights and measures, is based on EU law. The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 brings this EU law into UK statute, so that it will continue to have effect after the end of the transition period. Amendments since have made to enable this framework to operate smoothly in the UK, and added provisions such as a UK conformity mark. This article looks at a further statutory instrument that amends retained EU law in the area, particularly in light of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
