Theresa May has indicated that notice will be given under Article 50 of the Treaty on the European Union by the end of March 2017. However, On 3 November 2016 the High Court held that the government did not have the power to give this notice without legislation being passed to give them this power. The matter has been appealed and will be heard between 5 and 8 December 2016.

The High Court also indicated that MPs will be able to vote on the Brexit deal that Britain negotiates in order to ratify it – but that they will not have power to amend it. At present, it looks like any such vote is unlikely to take place before 2019 and so there is a lot of time for the negotiation to take place, which unfortunately means a lot of uncertainty for businesses and individuals.

David Davis has indicated that it is the government’s intention to convert all EU law that into domestic law wherever practicable and Theresa May has stated that she will preserve worker’s rights. In my previous email update on this subject, I explained that a lot of our employment law is domestic law (and not from the EU) and so this will not be changed. It now seems that any employment law that is from the EU will be adopted into domestic law and reviewed on a case by case basis. This means that any significant changes to our employment law is likely to take a long time to come into being.