May attacks Deloitte and BBC over leaked memo
THERESA MAY yesterday launched direct attacks on one of the world’s biggest consultancy firms and the BBC after a leaked memo claimed the Government could not cope with Brexit.
The memo from Deloitte said that an extra 30,000 civil servants may be needed to cope with the additional workload, adding that Whitehall is working on 500 Brexit-related projects.
The report in The Times newspaper, which claimed that the memo had been “prepared for the Cabinet Office”, was at the top of the news bulletins on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday morning. However, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said the memo was “unsolicited” and that the consultant who wrote it had not been working for the Government.
She accused Deloitte of “touting for business” and criticised both The Times and the BBC for the way in which they reported the story. Iain Duncan Smith, a former work and pensions secretary, said that Deloitte should be stripped of Government contracts.
Senior Eurosceptic Conservative MPs said the story was “patent nonsense” and suggested the release of the document was part of a plot by Remain campaigners to frustrate Brexit. After a day of criticism Deloitte released a statement admitting that the memo was “not commissioned by the Cabinet Office” and was “conducted without access to No 10 or input from other government departments”.
It said that the memo, which was written on Nov 7 by Keith Leslie, a
partner at Deloitte, had been intended for an “internal audience”. Mr Duncan Smith said: “It’s the same people trying every device they can to tell the world it’s all miserable and too difficult.
“This non-commissioned report is utterly bogus, gleaned from newspaper cuttings. The Government doesn’t need any more civil servants. I don’t think this was an accident. They were determined to do as much damage as possible. Isn’t it time for those people, the institutions that were very pro-Remain, to take a step back?”
Eurosceptic Conservative MPs highlighted a survey carried out by Deloitte during the European Union referendum which claimed that Brexit represented the biggest risk that their companies faced.
David Sproul, the chief executive of Deloitte UK, was a prominent Remain campaigner and signed a letter calling for the UK to remain in the EU. The leaked memo said: “Every department has developed a ‘bottom-up’ plan of what the impact of Brexit could be – and its plan to cope with the ‘worst case’. Although necessary, this falls considerably short of having a ‘Government plan for Brexit’ because it has no prioritisation and no link to the overall negotiation strategy.”
Mrs May’s spokesman, however, insisted Mr Leslie had not spoken to anyone in No 10 since the Prime Minister entered office. She said he conducted some work for David Cameron’s government in the immediate aftermath of the referendum.
In an unusually frank response, the Downing Street spokesman said: “I struggle to understand why such an unsolicited memo that has no credence can make front page news or indeed the broadcast bulletins in the morning.”
A BBC spokesman said: “The early morning bulletins included that the memo reported in The Times was prepared by a consultant. As the story developed, our coverage has reflected Downing Street’s position.”
Amid the row, a think tank also made claims that Brexit represented an “existential threat” to the operations of some government departments, according to key figures inside and outside Whitehall.
The Institute for Government said Brexit preparations would be “unsustainable” unless Philip Hammond uses the Autumn Statement to commit more resources.