The purpose of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act is to preserve the United Kingdom’s (UK’s) internal market as powers previously exercised at European Union (EU) level return to the UK, providing continued certainty for people and businesses that they can work and trade freely across the whole of the UK. The act also seeks to prevent internal trade barriers among the four countries of the UK, and to restrict the way that certain legislative powers of the devolved administrations can operate in practice.
Under the Act, the devolved administrations will be able to regulate goods and service providers in their part of the UK, but these regulations will not necessarily be enforceable on goods or service providers from other parts of the UK. This may undermine their ability to successfully implement certain kinds of policies that fall within the scope of the Act, for example, a ban on single-use plastics. This may in turn inhibit policies being trialled in one administration and replicated in others, limiting the benefits of devolution as a policy lab.
