Exiting the EU: Sectoral Impact Assessments

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

Passions are running rather high, but this is a deadly serious business. This is about transparency and the need for Parliament to have the information and facts it requires in order to do its job. I raised this question with the Secretary of State when I was first elected as Chair of the Exiting the European Union Committee. I asked him how he proposed to handle the sharing of information. In a letter to me in October last year, he stated:

“There is an important balance to strike between transparency and confidentiality and information sharing will need to be considered in close detail.”

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) spoke to me about this issue yesterday, and I pointed out to him that our Committee’s first report, published on 11 January this year, referred to the economic assessments that the Government were undoubtedly undertaking. It stated:

“In the interests of transparency, these should be published alongside the government’s plan in so far as it does not compromise the government’s negotiating hand.”

I make that point because the Committee accepted—indeed, my right hon. and learned Friend has accepted this from the Dispatch Box—that there might be certain information that the Government do not wish to put in the public domain and that it would not be right to do so, but that is not to say that nothing should be published, or that there is no method for sharing information with Select Committees in confidence.

Let me give an example. We are told that there is a Treasury analysis of the economic benefits to the UK of future free trade agreements with non-EU member states. The existence of that paper was revealed by Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform back in June. According to the Financial Times of 15 September,

“it is said to show that the value of new free trade agreements would be significantly less than the economic cost of leaving the customs union.”

None of us knows whether that is the case or not, because the Government have chosen thus far not to disclose that information to us. Yet that is information that we really ought to know, given that the Government have taken an absolutely major policy decision—that we should leave the customs union—without any analysis being shared with this House about the consequences or costs, or indeed the benefits, of that decision.

First, like all those who have been Ministers, I looked at—I will not pretend to have read them in their entirety—all the impact assessments that passed before my eyes during my time as a Minister. On all other matters, including relatively minor ones, the Government produce an impact assessment that is shared with Parliament and the public, so it really is extraordinary that for the single most important decision that this country, as a result of the referendum, has taken since the end of the second world war, the Government have published nothing by way of an impact assessment.

Secondly, there is the question—raised very effectively, I thought, by my right hon. and learned Friend—of who decides whether they can be published. I understand why Ministers told the Select Committee in evidence that they have not been able to read them all, and I have confessed that I did not read every single word of them when I was a Minister. Indeed, the Secretary of State told us that the analyses contain “excruciating detail”. He also confirmed that the Cabinet has not seen them. It could not be right for civil servants to make the decision about what should or should not be released; it clearly must be Ministers. The Select Committee has been told that certain analysis will now be shared with the Scottish Government—the point made a moment ago—so I presume that that decision was taken by Ministers.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend, in his capacity as Chair of the Select Committee, asked what safeguards could be put in place to ensure that information that would be detrimental to the UK’s negotiating position is not released, and I wonder whether he could comment on that.

[Hilary Benn]

I shall come on to that point at the end of my remarks.

Thirdly, it is hard to believe that all the material has the potential to undermine our negotiating position. I would be intrigued to know how reports on museums, galleries and libraries, and crafts or real estate, could contain information of such sensitivity that it would create difficulties for the Secretary of State when he next meets Mr Barnier.

[John Redwood]

On property, if there was an entirely bogus forecast of big job losses and a collapse in commercial property, it would be silly to publish that, as, first, it would be wrong and, secondly, it would be negative for our position.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hilary Benn]

It is not for me to argue the Government’s case, but if it were a bogus forecast I would be very surprised if the Government would have put it in an assessment they had drawn up—[Interruption] Please do not tempt me on this subject. This point raises the question of why, thus far, the Government have had a blanket policy of non-publication.

Having said all that, I welcome the spirit of what the Minister said today, even if I and—I venture to suggest—the House are not absolutely clear what was being offered when he helpfully said that the Government will not be opposing the motion. In that same spirit, I say to him, in conclusion, that if the Government comply with the motion, as they should if it is carried, and pass the information to us, I am sure the Select Committee—I hope the members who are here do not mind my saying this—would be very happy to discuss with Ministers how the material should be handled. We would be happy to discuss what can be published—to come back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander)—and where the Committee might share the Government’s view that there might be some difficulties if it were put into the public domain. I hope that that offer to the Minister is helpful as the Government give effect to the motion, if, indeed, it is carried by the House this evening.