The Commons Select Committee that is overlooking the brexit process had a sitting last week that I caiught on BBC Parliament yesterday. What was absolutely amazing was the lack of knowledge on what brexit meant, how long it would take, the implications for our economy and so on.
Facing the committee was Sir Simon Fraser, a former Permanent Under Secretary at the FCO, Professor Catherine Barnard for Cambridge and a lady from the Institute for Government. All extremely capable and knowledgeable but even they were unsure about many things.
Leavers like Michael Gove, Peter Lilley, Dominic Raab and Craig McKinley all tried to minimise every problem and essentially accused the witnesses of making the whole thing far more difficult than it needed to be. Mr Raab was shocked when it was suggested we would need more civil servants after brexit than before. Sir Simon gently pointed out that if we check all visitors from the EU to control immigration, more border control personnel will be needed. This is to say nothing of the dozens of EU agencies we rely on (see HERE) which will need to be duplicated or replaced with something else.
Gove asked how long a "quickie" divorce would take to negotiate after the witnesses had explained how vast and complex the withdrawal agreement would be. It all seemed as if they were unable or unwilling to acknowledge what everyone has been telling them for months. The fact that after five months we are still no closer to knowing what brexit means is enough to tell us how fraught the whole exercise will be (see The Telegraph HERE)
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