Brexit Readiness and Operation Yellowhammer

Lord Wigley Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

Let me explain to the noble Lord what these assumptions are all about. The Cabinet’s civil contingencies unit prepares the reasonable worst-case assumptions and then we do our best, working across the whole panoply of government, to mitigate those scenarios. In the case of social care, we are working closely with local authorities; this morning we had reports at a Cabinet committee from local resilience forums and from the devolved Administrations. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government is working closely with all local authorities and with the local resilience forums to mitigate the possible impacts in social care, and across all the other areas that local authorities are responsible for. We have extremely good, collaborative working across the piece on this matter.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, the noble Lord specifically referred to shellfish in his Statement—an industry of considerable importance in my part of north-west Wales. Can he give an assurance that, in circumstances of a no-deal Brexit, where those exporting shellfish to continental Europe have their product held up through no fault of their own and thereby lose tremendous value in trade, there will be a compensation scheme funded by the Government?

[Lord Callanan]

We will of course do our level best to make sure that the flow at the border does not result in any undue delays. There is a considerable amount of effort going into ensuring that, and there are appropriate plans in place to help industrial sectors and businesses that are adversely impacted by any of these effects. These are all contingency plans and we hope that none of them will come into operation. All the work we are doing is designed to make sure that there is a smooth flow of trade at the border and that none of the producers in north-west Wales will have cause for concern.