Government ‘took too long to prepare’

GOVERNMENT PREPARATIONS for a possible no-deal Brexit are “too late in the day”, a Commons report has claimed.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said departments have struggled to plan for such a scenario despite it raising concerns throughout last year.

It accused Chris Grayling’s, inset, Department for Transport (DfT) and the Department for Environment, Food and

Rural Affairs (Defra) of being “overoptimistic” in their Brexit planning.

The report said the DfT’s “optimism” in awarding a deal to start-up company Seaborne Freight to operate a ferry service has “quickly proved to be misplaced”, and its failure to secure the number of additional crossings it wanted will “limit what the Government can achieve”.

The pace at which the DfT had to procure freight capacity by the time it took action in autumn 2018 “forced it into a rushed and risky approach with significant consequences”, the PAC found.

A £33m out-of-court settlement with Eurotunnel over the ferry contracts “gives the impression that the department did not sufficiently engage and manage the wider range of stakeholders”.

The PAC expressed concern that Defra’s insistence that the impact on food supplies will not lead to shortages is “another example of over-optimism”.

A Government spokeswoman said it had “made significant progress in its no-deal preparations and managing flow at the border remains of the highest priority”. She added: “As part of our sensible contingency planning we have secured freight capacity which will ensure critical goods like medicines can continue to come into the UK.

“And we have put in place a wide range of other plans to minimise disruption at the border.”