Theresa May’s Government faces legal action for withholding its series of 58 secret papers on the economic impact of Brexit. Ministers have until the end of November to release the studies by civil servants or face a challenge for them in the High Court.
Molly Scott Cato (left), a Green Party Member of the European Parliament, and Jolyon Maugham QC of the Good Law Project, an activist legal charity that has launched several other challenges to the Government, say they will start judicial review proceedings in the High Court unless the 58 sectoral impact studies are released by November 30.
They are also demanding the release of a Treasury report comparing the possible costs of leaving the European Union with the potential benefits of striking new free trade agreements with other countries.
The move comes after Labour MPs won the support of dissident Conservatives to pass a Commons motion earlier this month calling for the impact assessments to be provided to the House of Commons committee charged with monitoring Brexit.
“Heavy Editing”
Brexit Minister Steve Baker told MPs in early November that the Government would release its assessment of the potential economic impact of Brexit within three weeks – although he warned that it did not exist in the form of 58 separate studies as the motion suggested and would require heavy editing.
David Davis (left), the Brexit Secretary, said ministers would seek to withhold confidential or commercially sensitive information as well as some of the civil service analysis which had been developed to underpin advice to ministers on their various negotiating options.
But lawyers for Scott Cato and Maugham called for the immediate release of all the secret papers in a letter sent to Davis and Chancellor Philip Hammond. Maugham, who raised £60,000 through crowd-sourcing to fund the legal challenge, said the Government’s desperate desire to hide “the reality of Brexit from its own people would not work”.
“Our old-fashioned, home-grown common law gives us the right to see these documents – not just whatever’s left after a minister, desperate for secrecy, has gone at them with a thick black marker pen,” Maugham said.
“See You in Court”
When the Speaker of the House, John Bercow ordered the Brexit Secretary in early November to hand the secret papers over to the parliamentary committee Davis said it would take an unspecified amount of time to prepare the material and he warned that it would be redacted and may not be in the format that Labour expected.
The fear of many opponents of Brexit is that the delay in releasing the papers could allow ministers time to alter them or delete passages that reflect poorly on Brexit.
Davis wrote last week to Hillary Benn, the Labour MP who chairs the committee, saying it would take his department “some time” to prepare the reports in a format that is “accessible and informative”.
“It is a wide mix of qualitative and quantitative analysis, contained in a range of documents developed at different times since the referendum,” Davis said. “It examines the nature of activity in the sectors and, in many cases, considers the alternatives after we leave as well as existing precedents.”
The analysis was “constantly evolving and being updated”, he said. “It will take my department – and other departments, since this work draws on inputs from across Government – time to collate and bring together this information in a way that is accessible and informative for the committee.”
by Bob Graham
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