Britain would be perfectly OK with no Brexit deal, says Boris
Foreign Secretary rejects ‘apocalyptic’ warning by MPs’ committee that UK may be seriously damaged
BRITAIN will be “perfectly OK” without a deal on Brexit and should be prepared to walk away from the EU talks likely to start formally this week, Boris Johnson has said.
The Foreign Secretary rejected warnings from an influential committee of MPs about “mutually assured damage” in the event of no deal, saying the consequences would not be “apocalyptic”.
His comments exposed a Cabinet split, with Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, saying it would “of course be bad” if no deal was reached.
Meanwhile, David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, said he was “confident I’ll get a good outcome” from talks with the 27 member states.
Their comments came ahead of a crucial Commons vote today that is expected to clear the way for Theresa May to trigger Article 50 – beginning the two-year process of exiting the EU – as early as tomorrow.
A Tory rebellion aimed at giving Parliament a “meaningful vote” on the Brexit deal, which would hold up the Bill’s passage, is expected to falter, with whips confident the rebels do not have the numbers to overturn the Govern- ment’s majority. The Government has offered Parliament a take it or leave it vote on the deal once the negotiations are complete, but some Tories, including Nicky Morgan, the former education secretary, want a pledge that MPs will be able to debate the deal and demand changes if they are not satisfied.
They have asked Mr Davis to bring the vote forward to Oct 2018 – six months before the Brexit deadline – to allow time for ministers to go back to the EU and hold further talks.
There is growing concern in Whitehall that EU negotiators could offer a bad deal to punish the UK for leaving, even if that meant acting against their own best economic interests.
The Commons foreign affairs committee warned in a report over the weekend that there was a very real possibility the talks could end with no deal which would be “very destructive” for both Britain and the EU.
The committee said that a failure to put a back-up plan in place would be a “serious dereliction of duty”. Anna Soubry, a former minister, made an even more gloomy prediction by suggesting yesterday that talks could col- lapse within six months, leaving Britain falling off a cliff edge. She described Mr Johnson’s comments as “irresponsible nonsense”.
Appearing on ITV’s Peston on Sunday, Mr Johnson insisted a deal was a “very likely” outcome, stressing that the UK has a “robust” economy and a confident negotiating team.
“Our partners and friends around the EU desperately want this thing to work,” he said.
Asked if the Government was drawing up contingency plans in case there was no deal, Mr Johnson said: “I think that actually, as it happens, we would be perfectly OK if we weren’t able to get an agreement, but I’m sure that we will, for the reasons that I gave.
“I don’t think that the consequences of no deal are by any means as apocalyptic as some people like to protest.”
Appearing on BBC Radio 5 Live, Dr Fox initially agreed with his fellow Cabinet minister, saying: “Certainly it wouldn’t be the end of the world if we had no deal.”
He performed a U-turn on Sky News later in the morning, saying: “Not having a deal of course would be bad, not just bad for the UK but for Europe as a whole.” A spokesman for Dr Fox said he was “clear that no deal is better than a bad deal”.
A report today warns it is “inevitable” that more money will need to be spent in government departments set to see an increased workload after Brexit, such as the Home Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Some ministries are already recruiting more civil servants, which shows “they must have been given indications that they will not be held to the administrative savings agreed in the pre-Brexit spending review,” the report by the Institute for Government and the UK in a Changing Europe project said.
Oxford University is calling on MPs to guarantee the right of EU citizens to stay in the UK after Brexit in order to protect academic staff. Research would “suffer enormous damage” if European workers had to leave, according to the university’s vice-chancellor, Louise Richardson, and the heads of all but three of its constituent colleges, in a letter to The Times.