This is to solve the problem that no one knows how many EU regulations not incorporated into UK law have direct effect and what they do. It begs the question: why didn’t the remain campaign have a bus pointing out the amount of money the taxpayer will lose in financing teams of government lawyers to research what will happen? What kind of chaos is there going to be when they report on laws we purportedly don’t want? And how undemocratic is it that the government will rescind these by secondary legislation without parliamentary debate?

There are many EU regulations which affect crucial areas such as employment rights, health and safety, criminal justice and asylum rights. Also, there are judgments of the Court of Justice of the EU that have had direct effect in the UK, including important decisions on equal treatment, such as Marshall v Southampton and South West Hampshire Area Health Authority (No 2) Case C-271/91, 2 August 1993, and on data protection, such as Digital Rights Ireland Ltd and Seitlinger and others Joined Cases C-293/12 and C-594/12, 8 April 2014, with a further challenge to the legislation (specifically, the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014) pending from Liberty on behalf of Tom Watson MP and others.

Ironically, it appears that the government is treating the invocation of article 50, necessary to trigger Brexit, as an exercise of the royal prerogative rather than as a matter for parliament. Ironic because the leave campaign said it was all about establishing our country’s democratic sovereignty, surely a matter for parliament and not for archaic royal command. A challenge to the government’s approach was won in the Administrative Court on 3 November: R (Miller and Santos) v Secretary of State for Exiting the EU [2016] EWHC 2768 (Admin). The government is likely to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Not all EU law protects rights. While asylum-seekers may depend on an EU regulation to establish their right to an interpreter, in one important respect they may be better off under Brexit. Our participation in the Dublin Convention depends on EU membership, not law, and once we leave, we can no longer rely on the agreement that asylum-seekers can be returned to the first safe country at which they arrived. (An immigration lawyer suggested to me that, after Brexit, the Greek government should charter a ship and take all the refugees in its camps to the UK.) The certainty of the Brexit supporters that it will mean ‘better control of our borders’ may yet prove to be as wrong-headed as the assumption that we can get access to single market freedom from business tariffs without allowing freedom of movement from Europe.

The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is, of course, a quite separate proposition as it depends on our membership of the Council of Europe, which Theresa May has said we won’t leave. However, the new justice secretary, Liz Truss, is reportedly going ahead with plans to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and bring in a British Bill of Rights, despite the warnings the government must have been given that such a provision will be discriminatory in that non-British citizens will have to go to the European Court of Human Rights and will not be able to cite the ECHR in British courts.

So the lessons for legal aid lawyers are: don’t assume Brexit will mean fewer rights; research and fight each and every point; and argue for better justice as part of this as yet unknown new constitutional settlement. ■