Davis under fire after release of ‘farcical’ Brexit report

DAVID Davis has been fiercely criticised after parts of the Government’s Brexit analysis of different UK industries were published by MPs.

The Commons Exiting the European Union Committee published 39 of the reports on different economic sectors, but redacted the industries’ views on Brexit.

The information was gathered to help inform Brexit Secretary Mr Davis and his officials’ approach to negotiations, and given to the committee in response to demands from MPs expressed in a Commons motion.

But they were described as a “farce”, displaying a “total absence of analysis”, with information that “could be found on Wikipedia”.

The Department for Exiting the EU (DExEU) stressed it was carrying out a “comprehensive programme of analytical work”, of which the reports are a part, and admitted they are not “exhaustive” or “the final say”.

Mr Davis handed over the documents after the Commons passed a Labour motion calling on him to publish 58 sectoral studies.

But he faced accusations of misleading Parliament after admitting no impact assessments of Brexit had been made.

Previously, he had told MPs as early as last December that his department was “in the midst of carrying out about 57 sets of analyses” on different parts of the economy.

In the end, all that was handed over was two lever-arch files containing 850 pages of what Mr Davis termed “sectoral analyses”.

Each document published by the committee on Thursday contains an overview of an economic sector in the UK, for example retail, the current EU rules it must comply with, and existing frameworks for how cross-border trade is facilitated.

But the industries’ views were redacted after committee chairman Hilary Benn clarified with Mr Davis what material should be withheld from the public because it is commercially, market or negotiationsensitive.

Labour MP David Lammy said: “What a farce. Most of this could be found on Wikipedia or with a quick Google search.

“David Davis clearly misled the House and then set his civil servants the unenviable task of coming up with these documents in a couple of weeks. They look like copy and paste essay crises.”