www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/dec/26/philip-hammond-urged-publish-treasury-brexit-impact-studies
Philip Hammond has come under pressure to publish another set of hidden documents relating to how a series of possible Brexit outcomes, including no deal, will impact on the economy.
Twenty-five Labour MPs have written to the chancellor demanding that he release the studies, which have so far been kept confidential, after he told a select committee that the work had been done.
“The public have a right to know what the impact of Brexit will be for them and for their families,” the politicians, who all support the Open Britain campaign, claimed.
The move comes after a similar suggestion by David Davis that his Brexit department had carried out 58 sectoral analyses resulted in immense pressure to publish the findings.
The Brexit secretary was heavily criticised after putting out documents that he admitted had been stripped of commercially sensitive material and anything considered detrimental to the UK’s negotiating position.
Davis avoided being charged with contempt of parliament over the controversy by persuading MPs that 58 separate impact assessments had never existed in that particular form.
Now a fresh push for more transparency on the government’s Brexit preparations has emerged because Hammond told the Treasury select committee this month that the government had “modelled and analysed a wide range of potential alternative structures between the European Union and the United Kingdom”.
He said the work “informs our negotiating position”.In a new letter, Labour MPs including Chris Leslie, Catherine West and Maria Eagle asked the chancellor to publish this analysis so their constituents could know what the impact of Brexit would be on themselves and their families.
“Without access to the latest taxpayer-funded analysis and research, parliament will be hamstrung in its ability to scrutinise the government’s approach and to present the facts to our constituents,” they said.
“It is vital that light is shed on the modelling and analysis that the Treasury has carried out. The best way to achieve that would be for the analysis to be published in its entirety.”
They claimed that leaving the EU would result in “profound and wide-ranging economic consequences”, so it was right for the public to understand what could happen.
Their letter was sent after questions surrounding what “end state” the government was aiming for rose in prominence as Theresa May and her cabinet embarked on their first formal talks about the issue.
Two meetings of May’s Brexit inner cabinet and then of the full ministerial team began with a presentation by the senior civil servant, Oliver Robbins. His work is likely to have to drawn on internal research assessing how each possible Brexit outcome is likely to hit the economy.
The discussions are critical as British and EU negotiators prepare to enter the second phase of Brexit talks, on an implementation period and then the future trading arrangement.
The controversy surrounding Davis concerned how British sectors would be affected by Brexit, while the information referenced by Hammond refers to the overall impact of different trading outcomes.The Labour politicians, also including Alison McGovern, Stephen Doughty and Stella Creasy, said parliament needed that information now as Brexit legislation made its way through parliament. In their letter they asked:
^Has this work been carried out independently by the Treasury?
Does the analysis differ significantly from the Treasury’s pre-referendum analysis?^
^Has the Treasury shared the analysis with DExEU and No 10? If not, how can it be said to be informing our negotiating position?
Has the prime minister read the conclusions of the analysis of each modelled outcome?^
In response, the Treasury pointed to Hammond’s comments at the time of the select committee hearing earlier this month.
^Asked by a committee member, Catherine McKinnell, if the information ought to be placed in the public domain given that it would help inform the public and parliament about the final outcome, Hammond suggested that it ought to be published but at a later date.
“When we get to the point where we have a deal negotiated and agreed, and it is being put before parliament, at that stage the maximum amount of analysis being placed in the public domain would be helpful,” he said.^
“At this stage, when we have not even begun the negotiation yet, I am afraid that to put our analysis in the public domain would be deeply unhelpful to the negotiation. There is no decision for parliament to make at this point. Parliament’s decision point will be when the government have negotiated a deal and are presenting it to parliament for endorsement.”
But a Labour MP, Leslie, argued that that would be too late as MPs would by then be faced with a single option. He said: “MPs are weighing up vital issues right now – on the withdrawal bill, the customs bill, the trade bill and so on. Only revealing the need to shut the gate after the horse has bolted would be the height of irresponsibility.”
The MPs also pointed out that Davis had been disparaging about Treasury work during the referendum itself.
“The Treasury carried out analysis during the referendum of different possible outcomes, including continued single market membership, completing a Canada-style free trade agreement, and falling back on to WTO [World Trade Organisation] terms. However, in March, the Brexit secretary dismissed this analysis, saying the Treasury’s forecasts had been shown to not be ‘robust’,” they wrote.
Davis’s comment, in front of a select committee, was in reference to modelling by government officials that was used by David Cameron and the remain campaign team in 2016.
The Brexit secretary added that May’s government had not by then (March 2017) forecast the likely impact of a no-deal scenario but would try to quantify the impacts of different outcomes.
By December he said the government would “at some stage … do the best we can to quantify the effect of different negotiating outcomes as we come up with them”. The next day Hammond suggested that much of that work had already been done.