GET YOUR FINGER OUT OVER BREXIT
MPs’ warning to Tory Government as it is revealed planning is way behind schedule
THE Government have been slammed for being “too slow” in preparations for Brexit.
A damning report warns they haven’t faced up to the scale of the work to be done before Brexit day in March 2019.
The Commons Public Accounts Committee said urgent action is needed to recruit staff, adding: “[The] real world will not wait for the Government to get their house in order.”
The committee’s deputy chairman, Leave-backing Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, described Brexit as “a byzantinely complicated task with the potential to become a damaging and unmanageable muddle”.
David Davis’s Department for Exiting the EU have identified 313 separate “workstreams” which need to be completed and have focused on ensuring plans to deal with them are “up to scratch”, the report said.
But it found DExEU have been “too slow” to ensure plans are put into practice, warning that some “may not be sufficiently developed to enable implementation to start quickly”.
The committee called on the Government to provide a formal update by June 1. And they said DExEU should publish details of the workstreams by April so MPs can scrutinise progress.
The report said: “Departments have still not faced up to the need to reprioritise existing activity to make space for Brexit.
“It is clear prioritisation has not been undertaken with the speed or on the scale needed and we have seen no evidence that departments have stopped any significant work.
“This is worrying as departments do not have the technical, project or senior leadership capacity for Brexit alongside all their other planned activity.”
Clifton-Brown added: “It is one thing to identify the amount of work required to deliver Brexit, it is another to do it. It is concerning that Government departments still have so far to go to put plans into practice.”