Coming soon...advice on what you must do if we end up with no deal
DOZENS of documents instructing businesses and households how to prepare for a “no-deal” Brexit are to be published, Theresa May said last night.
Questioned by senior MPs, the Prime Minister said work on measures needed to protect the economy and borders if EU exit negotiations collapse would be drastically stepped up over the summer.
“Over August and September we are going to be releasing a number of technical notifications to set out what UK citizens and businesses need to do in a no-deal scenario, so making much more public awareness of the preparations,” she told the liaison committee, made up of Commons select committee chairmen.
“We imagine there are going to be around 70 of those technical notices that will be issued.”
But Mrs May rejected claims that a no-deal outcome to the talks was becoming more likely, following the row over her Brexit plans this week.
Liaison committee chairwoman, Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, told her: “It looks as if we are getting closer to the possibility of no deal.”
Mrs May replied: “I don’t believe that is the case.”
The Prime Minister added: “If we are in a no-deal scenario then we will lay out the consequences for the public. What we are doing at the moment is working for a deal.”
She also insisted that the “majority” of border measures needed for her customs plan could be in place by December 2020 when the UK’s transition out of the EU ends.
Earlier, at Prime Minister’s Questions, former EU exit Secretary David Davis pressed the Prime Minister to publish a fall-back draft EU treaty that is being drawn up by Whitehall on the basis of the bloc’s other trade treaties with countries including Canada, Switzerland, South Korea, New Zealand and Japan.
Mrs May said: “What I want to see is not just an amalgam of those free trade agreements but an ambitious plan – which is what I believe we have produced – that will protect jobs in this country, deliver on the referendum result and, crucially, ensure that we have no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.”