Exiting the EU: Sectoral Analysis

Baroness Morgan of Cotes Excerpts

Tuesday 7th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baker]

The material that we hold includes commercially sensitive material and material that is relevant to our negotiating position. The House has previously voted not to release information that would be prejudicial to our negotiating position. If we were to give the right hon. Gentleman and the Committee the original reports commissioned at the beginning of the Department’s life, he would find that that material was incomplete and out of date. It is our intention to satisfy the motion by providing to him information that is relevant, timely and correct.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

The Minister does himself no favours by turning into a partisan matter a perfectly legitimate request by this sovereign Parliament for information about the most important negotiations to affect this country for decades. In the Secretary of State’s letter to the Chair of the Brexit Committee, he talks about

“a wide mix of qualitative and quantitative analysis”.

Presumably, one part of that is the model that the Chancellor referred to when he gave evidence to the Treasury Committee recently. He said that there is a cross-departmental model that

“looks at impacts on different parts of our economy”.

My understanding is that that model is available immediately. Will it be disclosed immediately?

[Mr Baker]

The Treasury model to which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor referred is not contained within the documents, which I have carefully studied.