Secret Brexit Impact Assessments "a costly vanity exercise"
Verified account
December 21, 2017
Today I viewed the 'sectoral analysis' in the @DExEUgov Brexit reading room. I was handed two hefty lever arch files. During my slot I managed to look at 24 of the 39 separate papers. (1)
Of these 24 sectors, the papers show that in 21 of them, industry has concerns about skills gaps, attracting talent and labour mobility post-Brexit. (2)
The papers detail calls from many sectors to remain part of existing EU institutions, programmes or agreements, such as EASA, Euratom, IEM, Horizon 2020, Erasmus and SES. (3)pic.twitter.com/UHoYEG9cfi
The government has also been lobbied by many sectors for EU regulations to be kept or mirrored exactly, or face significant negative consequences. (4)pic.twitter.com/UELHMm7w1P
Frustratingly only MPs & Peers can see these papers, and armed with pen and paper only. I transcribed the parts I have recreated here. Yet given the caveat below printed on every document, there is no reason for them not to be freely available online. (5)pic.twitter.com/k94VHWxeLP
This is how the contents are described. For example, the Agriculture one had 35 pages of background facts, and 5 pages of sector views. Most worryingly: no analysis at all of what the impact of Brexit could be. (6)pic.twitter.com/GvqhMUjNT1
Of course the government now claim they never did any sectoral impact assessments, only sectoral analysis. (7)pic.twitter.com/l43sbWOCAs
But that rather conflicts with what David Davis has been saying for months. https://fullfact.org/europe/brexit-impact-assessments/ … (8)pic.twitter.com/22E7NOCGHh
This raises the prospect either that the production of these papers and conspicuous secrecy around their content is nothing more than a costly vanity exercise to cover up Davis' errors in telling the Select Committee the analysis existed in 'excruciating detail'... (9)
Or that the Government has withheld the key impact analysis from what it has released to Parliament, which goes against the House of Commons motion of 1 Nov. I almost hope it is the latter, as that would mean the government has actually done some impact analysis. (10)
Bottom line: even from my hour perusing the government's collation of Brexit views across 24 sectors, it was blindingly obvious what a far-reaching, ridiculous folly this whole Brexit debacle is. (11/ENDS)
#ExitFromBrexit