Government’s EU Exit Analysis

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

My right hon. and learned Friend knows a lot from his own experience as Chancellor about the confidential information presented to Ministers ahead of Budgets, but that process has to go through a number of stages. As I have said, this information, which is preliminary and not yet finished, was presented to Ministers for the first time in recent days. It is, therefore, not in a form that is approved to go forward in the way he describes.

Despite, and in many cases because of, the points I have made, the analysis remains sensitive. Let me stress that the only reason we do not oppose the Opposition motion is that it makes clear that the analysis is to be shared with the Select Committee and Members on a confidential basis. We are about to embark on exploratory talks with the European Union regarding our future relationship and will be in formal negotiations over the coming months. Having an incomplete analysis such as this in the public domain would not serve the national interest in the upcoming negotiations. I cannot imagine that any reasonable Member of this House genuinely believes that it is in the national interest for the Government to have to publish at the start of the negotiation unfinished, developing analysis of scenarios that we are clear we do not want.

There is, however, another equally important reason why this analysis should not be put in the public domain, and it is simple: the functioning of Government—by which I mean any Government—about which my right hon. and learned Friend knows a great deal. I ask hon. Members who have been Ministers, who aspire to be Ministers or who have ever held a position of responsibility how they would feel about having to publish their team’s work in progress partway through a project. I am sure they would agree that publishing unfinished initial findings can be extremely misleading, and I am confident that they would join me in ensuring that that does not happen on a routine basis.

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

There is another reason why this set of analyses is peculiar and quite different. I listened carefully to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), but he is wrong on this count. This is not like advice to a Chancellor. This analysis, as I understand it, comes out of the back of the reality that all the previous forecasts, heavily reliant as they were on a gravity model of economics, have proved so wildly wrong that a variety of ways are being looked at to try to rectify that. There is, therefore, an experimental nature even to the economics, not just to the straight analysis, and that is why it does not have a massive bearing on the Government’s negotiating strategy at this point—because they themselves are questioning whether it is feasible to make a serious analysis or forecast that may be even slightly correct.

[Mr Walker]

My right hon. Friend makes an interesting point and I will leave it to Members to consider it when they see the actual information under discussion.

Throughout this process I have been impressed—and the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) has been clear repeatedly that he has been very impressed—by officials across Departments and the way in which they are rising to the challenge of delivery of our exit from the European Union. To do that, however, we need to have the space to undertake internal work and to challenge preconceptions.