Select committee hits out over analysis of economic impact

The government has put MPs in a position where they are being asked to vote on Theresa May’s deal without possessing all the facts about its possible economic impact, a Commons committee has said.

The chairwoman of the Treasury Select Committee, Conservative former minister Nicky Morgan, said this was not a position in which MPs should be put by any government.

Ms Morgan was speaking after the cross-party committee received a letter from Chancellor Philip Hammond which she said “shed no more light” on the possible economic impact of EU exit under the terms of the Agreement.

Mr Hammond was responding to a critical report released last month by the committee, which accused the government of failing to address the most realistic post-Brexit scenarios in its economic analysis.

The committee said the cross-government paper, intended to inform MPs ahead of the “meaningful vote” on Mrs May’s plans, failed to address the potential short-term economic impact of Brexit.

Instead of modelling the likely economic impact of the Withdrawal Agreement agreed with Brussels, the analysis looked at the more “optimistic” withdrawal scenario contained in last year’s Government White Paper, which differs in important aspects from Mrs May’s current plan, said the report.

And it complained the government had failed to model the consequences of the “backstop”.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said: “As the Treasury Select Committee have rightly set out, the government’s analysis of the economic impact of their proposed Brexit deal is inadequate and, ludicrously, it is based upon proposals abandoned months ago.”