Hammond frozen out of Brexit speeches

PHILIP Hammond is to be frozen out of a series of speeches outlining Britain’s blueprint for Brexit.

The PM and Cabinet members including Boris Johnson and David Davis will give a series of six separate speeches over the next three weeks, it was announced yesterday.

The Chancellor – who has been criticised repeatedly for being too gloomy about Britain’s prospects after leaving the European Union – will be left on the sidelines and is not due to take part.

Foreign Secretary Mr Johnson will kick off with a call for unity on Wednesday. On Saturday, Mrs May will use a visit to Munich to detail the security partnership the UK wants to maintain with the EU. Brexit Secretary Mr Davis will then make a speech on business and Cabinet Secretary David Lidington will address the way in which Brexit will affect Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, will set out how Britain will forge new trade deals across the world.

Following a summit of the Cabinet’s Brexit war committee at Chequers later this month, Mrs May will set out how she sees the relationship between Britain and Brussels after withdrawal.

International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt yesterday said business leaders and the public ‘will get answers’ about where the country is heading.

She told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: ‘The public want the vision and they want some meat on the bones and that’s what they’re going to get.’

Justice Secretary David Gauke yesterday played down Mr Hammond’s absence from the list of Cabinet Brexit speakers.

‘He is not part of the set of speeches outlined, but that doesn’t mean the Chancellor is not expressing his views internally in the Cabinet conversations, but also externally,’ he told ITV’s Peston on Sunday. ‘So, I don’t think there is... any kind of plot.’