Financial Times publishes letter by Professor Kenneth Armstrong on the EU (Withdrawal) Bill

Sidney Fellow and Professor of Law Kenneth Armstrong authored the book Brexit Time: Leaving the EU - why, how and when? which was published by Cambridge University Press earlier this year. The book examines the implications of last June's momentous poll on the UK's membership of the European Union, and asks how Brexit came about and considers the legal challenges ahead.

Professor Armstrong followed up with a letter entitled 'Bill puts supremacy of EU law on a statutory footing' which has been recently published in the Financial Times. If you have a subscription, you can read the article in full on the Financial Times website.

You can also read the letter here:

Like many lawyers, Dominic Grieve is rightly anxious about the power to amend UK law that will be granted to ministers under the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill which begins its Second Reading in parliament this week (‘Brexit is not an excuse to tame parliament, FT 2 September). But he makes an assertion about the bill and the supremacy of EU law that merit a response.

Mr Grieve states that one of the functions of the bill will be to bring ‘the current subordination of our legal system to the supremacy of EU law to an end’. In fact the bill does something that no act of parliament has ever done, and this is to expressly recognise and apply the principle of the supremacy of EU law to ‘any enactment or rule of law’ passed before the UK leaves the EU.

It is one of the ironies of Brexit that after past failed attempts by parliament to legislate to constrain the supremacy of EU law, it should be at the moment of the UK’s departure from the EU that parliament should now decide for the first time to put the supremacy of EU law on a statutory footing.

You can find out more about Professor Armstrong's book by visiting the Cambridge University Press website.