Territorial extent and application
- Section 42 sets out the territorial extent of the Act; that is the jurisdictions that the provisions in the Act are intended to form part of the law.
- This Act extends to the whole of the UK. In addition, repeals and amendments made by the Act have the same territorial extent as the legislation that they are repealing or amending. For example, section 1 of the EU (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which repeals the ECA, extends to Gibraltar and the three Crown Dependencies (the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) to the extent that the ECA itself extended to those territories. This means the saving of the ECA in section 1 (which will alter the effect of section 1 of the 2018 Act), will extend to those jurisdictions to the same extent as the original Act.
- The power in section 36 of the Immigration Act 1971 or (as the case may be) section 60(4) of the UK Borders Act 2007 may also be exercised to extend to the Isle of Man or any of the Channel Islands the modifications made to that Act by section 10 of the Act.
- Further, paragraphs 1 and 2 of Schedule 5, which provide for the deferral of subordinate legislation to the end of the implementation period, extend outside the UK to the extent that any subordinate legislation which they modify so extends.
- Beyond this, as Gibraltar and the Crown Dependencies normally legislate for themselves to give effect to relevant obligations under international agreements - as is the case with Gibraltar under the Constitution of Gibraltar 2006 - the Act does not extend to those territories.
- The UK Parliament does not normally legislate with regard to matters that are within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales or the Northern Ireland Assembly without the consent of the legislature concerned. It is also the practice of the Government to seek the consent of the devolved legislatures for provisions which would alter the competence of those legislatures or the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
- The legislative consent is set out at Annex A.
