58 Brexit Impact Studies

Davis is trying to weasel his way out, but has been told by the speaker that nothing in his diary is more important than answering the committee

The Brexit Secretary has said that the Government has not produced a single economic impact assessment on the UK leaving the EU. David Davis just told the Brexit Select Committee that no impact assessments exist, more than a year after the historic vote to Brexit.

He said that there are formal definitions of impact assessments and the work done by the government does not fit those definitions. Davis also admitted that, despite widespread economic fears, the government has not undertaken a sector by sector analysis of the impact of Brexit. ‘There’s no systematic impact assessment I’m aware of,’ Davis told the parliamentary committee.

metro.co.uk/2017/12/06/david-davis-admits-government-not-produced-brexit-impact-assessment-7136467/

Watch Select Committee on BBC2 right now- unbelievable

He also said that absolutely no assessment on the country and economy has been made by the government for if we leave the customs union.

Now there is a civil servant saying that it was rather strange being asked for something that they didn’t have.

WTF have they been doing then? No impact assessments? Is that because they just assume that it will all turn out okay in the end because, well, we're Great Britain, don't you know, and we're better than anyone else, and don't need them and can go it alone. Good God, I knew they were an incompetent, arrogant bunch of fuckwits but somehow I still assumed they would have assessed SOMETHING.

Doesn't that mean that Davis lied to Parliament about impact assessments having been written?
I know he said it on the Andrew Marr programme last summer.
He says now it would take ten years plus for these reports to be written!!!
How can they go into Brexit not knowing what the effects might be?
What a shambles.

Phillip Rycroft has said that the civil service have a particular definition of an impact assessment, they produced sector studies, which apparently are not the same.
It all feels a bit Sir Humphrey to me.

From twitter:

More Chris Kendall ??

"I read this (^i.e no impact assessments existed^) with boggling eyes. As a junior UK civil servant in the 90s, I was sent to Brussels with a single instruction: always insist on impact assessments! The British banged on about them at EVERY Council meeting. All EU policies MUST HAVE IMPACT ASSESSMENTS."

Phillip Rycroft is the unfortunate civil servant who has been handed the poisoned chalice of running the Brexit Dept . He is the Sir Humphrey to David Davis's Jim Hacker. If he ever manages to make a silk purse out of this pig's ear, he will certainly deserve his knighthood.

I am incandescent with rage now - the lying toad- but worse- Mrs May and all the others KNEW they DID NOT exist, and that he was LYING- so they were complicit.

Here, from David Allen Green's blog is a 'history' of Davis' pronouncements on the impact analyses. It was published 27th November.

jackofkent.com/2017/11/the-early-history-of-the-58-brexit-sector-analyses/

How can this shower be allowed to continue to run Brexit negotiations?

JK Rowling has said on twitter that she can't think of a swear word bad enough to express what she feels about all this! I know the feeling.

Even the Brexit-supporting Daily Telegraph cannot put any positive spin on this deception. It's online arcticle reporting this shocking admission is headed "David Davis accused of 'total dereliction of duty' after he reveals Brexit impact assessments 'don't exist"

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/06/david-davis-accused-total-dereliction-duty-reveals-brexit-impact/

Any leavers on here prepared to put their heads above the parapet to defend this twattery?

Are any of us really surprised? Lies and contempt have been a key feature of both this and Cameron's government (I cringe now to think that I actually voted for him in 2010!). The only difference this time is that their lies don't just affect the poor and the vulnerable who are powerless and (they have tried to convince us) deserve whatever is thrown at them anyway.

Liberal Democrat committee member Wera Hobhouse said: ‘It is unbelievable that these long-trumpeted impact assessments don’t even exist, meaning the Government has no idea what their Brexit plans will do to the country. ‘Ministers must now urgently undertake these impact assessments and ensure people are given the facts. ‘Whether it’s through incompetence or insincerity, David Davis has been misleading Parliament from the start.’

metro.co.uk/2017/12/06/david-davis-either-incredibly-incompetent-incredibly-dishonest-7137011/?ito=cbshare

Just after this shocking revelation, Theresa May, answering Questions to the Prime Minister, kept repeating "We are leaving the EU, we are leaving the single market and we are leaving the customs union" . What we now know is that that this stance (which DD told the committee could have a bigger effect on our economy than the 2008 banking crisis) was adopted without any analysis of the impact.

mamacaz not surprised, but still very, very angry. Whenever people find out DC was my MP, I say 'It's not my fault!'. Don't blame you for voting for him though, he did a good job of hiding his utter contempt for 'commoners'.

One could argue- and I would totally disagree, that, as DD said today 'impact assessments have zero usefulness' - and at least that would be honest.

But to say, and to maintain until today- as said to the Foreign Affairs Committee on September 13th 2016 'There is the structural analysis ... of 53 cross cutting sectors, what is going to happen to them (poor grammar, but who cares)

and by Lord Bridges of Headley, to the House of Lords EU sub committee, on 13th October: we have segemented the UK economy into roughly 100 production sectors ... for our analysis of the impact of Brexit on them'

but to maintain, to this day more than a year later- that they do exist - and then say 'well actually it was all lies, they do not' - is nothing but contempt of Parliament and the electorate- and tantamount to treason. And Mrs Maqy and the whole GVT, who knew they did not exist, were complicit to that massive lie- and in contempt too. Totally disgusting, and more importantly, hugely destructive to the country as a whole, Brexiteers, Remainers, and everything in between.

So we know now that the government has made no study of the impact of Brexit on the U.K. economy. But we also know that many businesses have and given the result to the government.
We further know that none of these assessments have been read by the government.

It gets better doesn’t it

David Lammas has asked the question we all need to know.

At what point is Davis going to be held to account for lying?

But quite honestly it goes beyond that I think.

There has been absolute negligence and incompetence.

Lammy

Of course I suppose that there is a possibility that they actually do exist, but are so terrible that Maybot is scared to let them be seen.

Time a leak was made if so.

Looking back on what DD has actually said, I don't think he can be held in contempt of parliament as he's always referred to the documents as 'analyses'. (Although you could possibly hold him in contempt of knowledge)
I agree he should have pointed out people's wrong assumptions at the time(s) and made his case for the futility of trying to quantify something when the terms were unknown. Plenty of models are available for analysing situations fraught with complexity and I think he needs to explain why they couldn't be adapted for Brexit projections.
Will be interesting to see if he can survive.

In a way, I feel it is wrong to put the blame solely on DD - Mrs May and the whole GVT- as well as Lord Bridges of Headley- that they do NOT exist - but allowed him to continue to lie without any attempt to correct. They are just as guilty, and in a way, even more so - by their complicity.

That is what twitter is saying jura

I have never seen anything like it on twitter. I’m not sure how this government can survive for much longer.

Thanks, I am afraid I am not on Twitter.