Plans for a No Deal Brexit are being reviewed every week, says top civil servant
The Government are "completely" on top of contingency planning in case Britain leaves the European Union without a deal in place, reveals the head of the Civil Service
MINISTERS are reviewing No Deal Brexit plans every week, the head of the Civil Service has revealed.
Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood said the Government was “completely on it” in terms of planning for leaving the EU with no deal.
But he warned that quitting without striking an agreement on future trade relations would only be a success if other EU countries and businesses also prepare.
Sir Jeremy’s comments mark a victory for pro-Brexit ministers who raised concerns that he wasn’t doing enough to prepare for No Deal.
In October senior Brexiteers within the Government said Remain-backing Cabinet ministers and civil servants were deliberately putting little effort into preparing for a no deal scenario to remove the likelihood of Britain walking away from Brexit negotiations.
Theresa May is seeking a comprehensive free trade deal with the EU but has been at pains to say she is ready to walk away from negotiations, insisting “no deal is better than a bad deal”.
Many Brexiteers believe Britain must show it is prepared to break off talks in order to strengthen its negotiating hand.
Sir Jeremy told the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee: “There are huge challenges with no deal, obviously we’ve done a vast amount of work on the no deal scenario and that work continues and we will do it to the best of our ability.
“But the most important thing to understand about the no deal scenario is that a lot of the work that will determine whether or not it is a sort of smooth transition to no deal is work that would have to be done by other countries.
“The Port of Calais for example - we can get our ducks in a row entirely in Dover but if that isn’t the case in Calais then that causes some problems, causes some problems to the French as well of course.
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“Similarly our private sector companies will have to do quite a lot of preparation and so on, so there are things external to government.
“On the things we can control ourselves, I would say that we were - I don’t want to sound overly confident about this - but we have got a very, very good grip on the issues.
"We go through them on a very, very frequent basis... we’ve got a very good inter-ministerial group of ministers that now looks at this on a weekly basis, so we know what the issues are.
"We’re working at them hard, I don’t want to reveal all the vulnerabilities of our planning position, but we are completely on it, that’s what I would say.”