Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many civil servants in his Department are currently working on planning for the UK leaving the EU without a deal; and how many have been moved from other projects to work on those plans.

Over 80% of Defra’s agenda is affected by the UK’s departure from the European Union and as a result many roles across the Defra group are now supporting work relating to our departure from the EU, either directly or indirectly. We are unable to disaggregate between ‘deal’ and ‘no deal’ planning work.

As at the end of November, Defra group has recruited over 2300 staff including fixed term appointments, interims and staff redeployed from elsewhere in the group, to work on the UK’s departure from the EU. Over 2100 are already in post with the remainder working through pre-employment processes.

Departments continually review workforce plans, reprioritise and assess changing needs. At the same time, the Civil Service as a whole is working to ensure that EU departure implementation is carried out to high quality without impacting public service delivery across the whole of government.