The crisis gripping the British government showed little sign of abating on Wednesday as David Davis, the Minister in charge of Brexit, admitted that there has been no sector-by-sector impact assessment, appearing to contradict his own earlier reassurances.
Appearing before the Exiting the European Union Committee, chaired by Labour MP Hilary Benn on Wednesday, Mr. Davis insisted that there was no need for a formal impact assessment to understand regulatory hurdles. “I am not a fan of economic models as they have all been proven wrong,” he told the committee on Wednesday.
In June, Mr. Davis had told the BBC that “50 or nearly 60” sectoral analyses had already been done, while in response to a question in October on whether the Prime Minister had seen impact assessments that had not yet been published, he answered: “She will know the summary outcomes of them. She will not necessarily have read every single one. They are in excruciating detail.”
The revelation triggered a political storm in Britain. “Did he know & lie? Or not know so is incompetent fantasist,” tweeted Labour MP Yvette Cooper.
“He simply can not be allowed to go around lying to Parliament and the British public in this way. Mendacious, conceited, vain, duplicitous, wholly unfit for office,” said Labour MP David Lammy. “This really is a shambles” declared Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, facing a beleaguered Prime Minister Theresa May at the weekly Prime Ministers Questions on Wednesday. “this government is not fit for the future. Wouldn’t it be best if they just got out of the way”.
The past week has been one of the most tumultuous for the British government since Brexit negotiations began. The government was forced into an embarrassing climbdown on the Irish question after the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which is in alliance with the Conservatives, vetoed what was on the table. “We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically, or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom,” DUP leader Arlene Foster said earlier this week.
Meanwhile, Ms. May continued to insist on Wednesday that Britain would leave the EU customs union and the single market, amid a raucous session in Parliament in which MPs laughed down her suggestion that “very good progress” had been made on Brexit negotiations. “Nothing is agreed till everything is agreed,” she insisted.
Earlier this week, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) called for clarity on Brexit negotiations as the momentum in private sector growth has slowed in the three months to November.
While Ms. May has insisted that the details of the Irish question are for the second stage of negotiations, EU leaders have insisted that talks cannot move to the second stage until three questions around Brexit — the divorce bill, the rights of EU citizens and the Irish question — have been answered. A failure to reach an agreement on Ireland this year could push those crucial negotiations into the New Year. Britain is set to leave the EU in March 2019.
