Brexit: Cabinet Considering Ramping Up No-Deal Plans

The cabinet is discussing whether to ramp up preparations for a no-deal Brexit amid uncertainty over the fate of Theresa May’s proposed EU exit deal.

Ministers will set out how much money each department is being given to prepare, should the UK leave the EU on 29 March without a formal agreement.

MPs will not vote on the PM’s deal until the third week in January.

Labour, which has tabled a motion of no confidence in the PM, has accused Mrs May of trying to “run down the clock”.

Number 10 dismissed the motion – which is unlikely to be debated until early next year – as “silly political games”.

With 101 days left until Brexit and many MPs still opposed to the government’s withdrawal agreement, ministers are due to consider a paper on plans for leaving the EU without a deal.

But a no-deal Brexit is also opposed by many MPs.

A cross-party group of 60 of them have written to the prime minister, saying it would do “unnecessary economic damage”.

Communities Secretary James Brokenshire told the BBC that there would be “consequences” of a no-deal exit but “a lot of work” was going into minimising the disruption if it happened.

“We have been taking ‘no deal’ seriously for quite some considerable period,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today.

“It’s not what we want to do, it’s not what we still expect to do… but I think it is right and proper that we maintain our work on preparing for no deal, however reluctantly.”

In the autumn of 2017, The Treasury earmarked £3bn for ‘no deal’ planning.

In March, Chancellor Philip Hammond said half of that had been allocated to 20 government departments, with the Home Office, transport, the environment and business among the largest recipients.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the BBC’s Newsnight that he had recently ordered full ‘no deal’ planning across the National Health Service.

"We’ve instituted full no deal planning within the NHS already, and I would like to see the whole of government going to that position because it’s the responsible thing to do."

– Matt Hancock tells us it's time to prepare for a no deal
 #newsnight | @MarkUrban01 | @MattHancock pic.twitter.com/pDc9UohVLF

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) December 17, 2018

But Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit negotiator, criticised UK ministers, who he said were “glorifying” the prospect of leaving without a comprehensive deal in the hope individual agreements could be reached in areas like transport and livestock movements.

Those, like Jeremy Hunt, who glorify a no–deal #Brexit are totally irresponsible. It is not the job of politicians to make the people they lead poorer, remove opportunities, rights & make lives more uncertain. There is no such thing as a "managed no deal". https://t.co/f1sPT4R2KS

— Guy Verhofstadt (@guyverhofstadt) December 18, 2018

Mr Corbyn, meanwhile, is under pressure to push for a further vote of no-confidence in the government as a whole.

On Monday night, he tabled a motion calling on MPs to declare they have no confidence in the prime minister because she failed to have a vote on her Brexit deal straight away.

Mr Corbyn said that, by the week of 14 January, a month would have been wasted since the original 11 December vote was postponed, with “not a single word renegotiated and not a single reassurance given”.

“The deal is unchanged and is not going to change,” he said.

No 10 has refused to make time for the motion.

Other parties – the SNP, Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and the Greens – have called on Mr Corbyn to push for a no-confidence vote against the government as a whole.

Unlike a vote aimed at the prime minister, the government would have to allow a vote on this motion and, if successful, it could force a general election.

Labour’s shadow housing secretary, John Healey, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday that tabling a no-confidence motion against the government was “a question of when, not if”.

However, Nigel Dodds, deputy leader of Northern Ireland’s DUP, whose votes the Conservative government has relied on in big votes since the June 2017 election, dismissed Mr Corbyn’s move as “parliamentary antics”.

Mrs May also appeared to have the support of pro-Brexit backbench critics who last week failed in a bid to oust her as Tory leader.

One of them, Jacob Rees-Mogg, said he would never vote against Mrs May or a Conservative government in a vote of confidence in the Commons.

“I had my vote of no confidence in her and I lost. I am not going to repeat the exercise,” he told Today, suggesting that the PM was “at greater risk” from Tory MPs who wanted to remain in the EU than Eurosceptics in the party.

On Tuesday, the Daily Telegraph published a letter by 53 business leaders, including former Sainsbury’s boss Justin King and Glastonbury Festival founder Michael Eavis, calling on the prime minister to “take her deal to the British people”.

“The prime minister abandoned the most important vote in the House of Commons for a generation because she knew she could not secure a parliamentary majority for her deal,” they wrote.

They said last week’s rebellion by her own MPs “underlines the impossibility of resuscitating it”.

The prime minister’s Brexit deal sets out the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU – on 29 March 2019 – and includes a declaration on the outline of the future relations between the UK and the EU.

But the deal only comes into force if both the UK and European parliaments approve it.

Mrs May has insisted the EU has listened to MPs’ concerns over the contentious issue of the Northern Ireland border backstop and she hopes to secure additional “political and legal assurances” in the coming weeks about how it might come into force and how the UK could leave it.

Source: BBC