That no impact assessments exist

Yesterday he told the committee that “no systematic impact assessments” had in fact been carried out.

Pressed by committee chairman Hilary Benn whether any impact assessment had been conducted of the implications of Brexit for the automotive, aerospace or financial services sectors, Mr Davis said “no” to each, before cutting the Labour MP short, saying: “I think the answer will be no to all of them.”

Instead, he said, officials will, “at some stage” conduct work to quantify the effects of different possible outcomes, such as a free trade agreement with the EU or moving to World Trade Organisation rules.

And he told Mr Benn there was no “formal quantitative” assessment undertaken of the likely impact of leaving the customs union before the government committed itself to the step.

“There was a judgement made on qualitative things, not a quantitative one,” he said.

Mr Benn described the decision not to conduct sectoral impact assessments as “rather strange”.

And he said it was “quite extraordinary” that no assessment was made of the impact of leaving the customs union “given the momentous nature of that decision”.

“You have said there are no impact assessments,” said Mr Benn.

“You were hoping that, at the October (European) Council, the door would be open to phase two of the negotiations, where the question would be asked ‘What does the UK government want?’

“Are you actually telling us that the government hadn’t – and still hasn’t – undertaken the assessment?”

Mr Davis told the committee: “I’m not a fan of economic models because they have all proven wrong.

“When you have a paradigm change – as happened in 2008 with the financial crisis – all the models were wrong. The Queen famously asked why did we not know.

“Similarly, what we are dealing with here in every outcome is a paradigm change.

“We know not the size, but the order of magnitude of the impact.”