I thank the noble Lords, Lord Fox and Lord Leong, for their contributions. No, I was not here at the time of REUL, but I have been involved its implementation in the last 12 months at the Department for Business and Trade, and I am very proud to say that 1,400 pieces of legislation have been revoked—about 20% of the statute book. I am also very proud that we in Britain are taking, as usual, a pragmatic approach: where we can use the same legislation to effectively adopt sensible regulation, we can do that at the same time as repealing those we want to remove from the statute book. On the question of how long this will last, this is an indefinite extension, but it will be a dynamic situation going forward; it does not imply automatic divergence or indeed convergence in the future. We will assess that regulation by regulation and, in doing so, will therefore get the benefit of choosing the best route for our businesses.
Let me respond to the question of why we are retaining UKCA, raised by both noble Lords. The Government are committed to making sure that UKCA remains a viable route for businesses to sell products in Great Britain. It is important that we have our own approach because, as I said before, we may need to do something in the future that we consider to be in the interests of UK businesses and consumers that may require some divergence from the EU. We will cross that bridge when we get there. We are already, for example, using our current autonomy by having the UKCA regime introduce digital labelling, which is giving us and businesses more flexibility. In answer to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Fox, I can also confirm that this means we will recognise CE in both Great Britain and Northern Ireland for the majority regulations, again making it easier for businesses to sell products across the whole UK market.
Turning to the good point made by the noble Lord, Lord Leong, about the conformity assessment market, we have put in place a regime that we will build in future, but we will continue to work with UKAS to understand the capacity of the conformity assessment market and make sure there is sufficient capacity to ensure that the domestic route to market is still available. Although in the short term, it may require a less immediate standard, that capability will build in the future as we move forward.
To give a high-level summary, this legislation will provide industry with a path of certainty and clarity to continue placing goods on the Great British market, removing the 31 December deadline. It will reduce duplicative costs, as we have said. It will save UK businesses a significant amount of money over the next 10 years. We think that approximately 9,600 UK manufacturers will benefit from reduced conformity marking and labelling burdens, and some 2,000 UK manufacturers will not need duplicative conformity assessments. This has come about as a result of close engagement with industry. We are listening to what industry, large and small, has said; that is the role of government. We will continue to take a pragmatic approach to improving regulation in order to benefit businesses and consumers, while maintaining our commitment to high levels of protection for UK consumers.