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Emily Thornberry accused the government of failing to carry out an economic impact assessment of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, after two key government departments told the shadow secretary for international trade that they had no such document.
As official figures showed a 40.7% decline in exports to the EU in January, Thornberry wrote to the secretary for international trade, Liz Truss, to ask why she had published evaluations of many much less important deals, but not the crucial Christmas Eve trade deal with the United States.
When Thornberry challenged Truss in the House of Commons to produce an economic analysis of the deal in January, the minister referred it to the EU working group in the Cabinet Office, which spearheaded the tense negotiations.
But when Thornberry made a freedom of information request to the Cabinet Office, it was referred to the Treasury, which responded that it “does not have a specific document that meets the terms of its request.”
Johnson’s spokesman had previously said that the government would not release its analysis of the economic impacts of the deal, but Thornberry has written to Truss to ask if the government did not conduct any analysis.
“It does not appear that the government is refusing to publish the economic impact assessment that it has carried out in relation to the UK-EU agreement, but rather that there was never an economic impact assessment,” he said in a letter to which The Guardian had access.
“For an agreement of such immense importance to our country’s economy, business, employment and commerce, that is absolutely staggering. And when we compare it to the approach taken to assessing all the other UK trade agreements signed in the last two years, it doesn’t make any sense. “
He gave the example of the department’s recent publication of the analysis of the agreement reached with Albania, a country with which trade was worth 45 million pounds sterling in 2019. Trade with the EU is worth 15,000 times more.
Labor has begun taking a more aggressive approach to highlighting the shortcomings of Johnson’s Brexit deal and the impact on business in recent weeks.
Keir Starmer lashed out at his MPs into voting for the deal in December, saying Labor wanted to avoid a no-deal exit and would still criticize the deal. But since then he has made few mention of the impact of the end of the transition period on companies.
David Frost, who negotiated the deal and now sits in the cabinet as EU Relations Minister, tried to downplay the significance of the sharp drop in exports in January, noting that many companies had stockpiled products before the end of the period of transition.
The independent Office of Budgetary Responsibility warned that short-term trade disruption is likely to cut 0.5% of GDP in the first quarter of this year.
