The Arbitration Act 2025 for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, which received Royal Assent on 24 February 2025, amends the Arbitration Act 1996 to clarify certain legal issues, including governing law for arbitration agreements, arbitrator disclosure duties, summary dismissal of claims and recognition of emergency arbitrators. It does not address confidentiality or AI, even though both continue to evolve through case law and institutional guidelines. Haynes Boone attorneys Andreas Dracoulis, Fiona Cain and Zainab Al-Qaimi authored an article in Mealey’s International Arbitration Report breaking down the changes to the Arbitration Act 1996 and how this might impact the arbitration landscape in 2025.
Read an excerpt below:
Predictions for the future are by their nature uncertain. It is possible to draw on what has happened in previous years, such as the cases heard by the courts, to identify future trends. New rules introduced by arbitral institutions also provide a barometer on developments. However, for England and Wales, as 2025 is very likely to see the introduction of an amendment to the Arbitration Act 1996 (the Act), it is possible to say with some certainty how issues which have previously been the subject of common law, will now fall to be determined in the future. In essence, in 2025 arbitration in England and Wales is adopting the approach advocated by Abraham Lincoln; “The most reliable way to predict the future is to create it.”
The Arbitration Bill (the Bill) is the result of a comprehensive review of the Act by the Law Commission in 2022 and 2023, which involved two public consultations. The Bill was first introduced into the UK Parliament in 2023, but did not complete the legislative process before the general election was called in May 2024 and the UK Parliament prorogued. However, the new government reintroduced the Bill shortly after it came to power and the Bill has made swift progress completing its journey through the Houses of Parliament on 11 February 2025 and is now pending Royal Assent. The Bill, once enacted, will introduce changes to the Act, which has been in place for 28 years, and provide clarity on certain matters which have come before the courts regularly including in 2024, some of which are discussed below.
This commentary was submitted before the UK Arbitration Bill received Royal Assent, making it an official Act of Parliament on 24 February 2025.
