May has not read secret reports on how Brexit will hit economy, admits Davis

THERESA MAY was put on the spot today after David Davis suggested she had not bothered to read the “excruciating detail” of secret Whitehall studies into the impact of Brexit.

In an eyebrow-raising exchange with a Labour MP, Brexit Secretary Mr Davis said he thought Mrs May would only have read summaries of the assessments, but not an entire report.

“Well, she’ll know the summary outcomes of them,” he said. “She won’t necessarily have read every single one, they are in excruciating detail.”

Asked if the rest of the Cabinet had seen the assessments, Mr Davis said: “No, they won’t, they will have seen the summary outcomes, that’s all.”

Seema Malhotra, the former shadow Treasury minister who quizzed Mr Davis in a committee hearing, wrote to Downing Street this morning demand clarification.

“We are on the brink of the biggest change to our country’s economy for generations,” she said. “It is staggering to hear David Davis suggest the Prime Minister has not even read the most important reports the Government has undertaken on the economic impact of Brexit. Theresa May has a responsibility to Parliament and the country to get Brexit right and ensure the ongoing prosperity of British businesses and families. The Prime Minister must clarify whether she has read the reports, or if David Davis is mistaken.”

More than 120 MPs recently signed a letter demanding to see the unpublished Whitehall impact assessments, in which impartial civil servants set out the likely effects of Brexit upon different sectors of the economy. The Department for Exiting the EU has even refused to admit which sectors have been studied, saying only that they will be published “shortly”. Mr Davis faced

to more embarrassment today when his Labour shadow Sir Keir Starmer secured an urgent question in the Commons to demand clarity on his claim yesterday that Parliament might not get a vote on the final Brexit deal until after March 2019, when Britain is due to depart.

Senior Tory and former attorney general Dominic Grieve later said “a short extension” would have to be agreed to Britain’s EU membership beyond March 2019 if a deal is not ratified in time.

In another blow, a former ambassador said Mrs May’s decision to invoke Article 50 led to Britain being “screwed” by the EU. Sir Ivan Rogers, who quit as the UK’s permanent representative in Brussels in January, said starting the two-year countdown without a plan for negotiations let the EU set the “rules of the game”.

Today, a Downing Street spokesman declined to reveal if Mrs May had read the entire report.