The government says it cannot publish a white paper on Brexit for fear of disclosing its negotiating hand to the EU. But I think it could answer all the following questions without doing any such thing, and I am sure there are plenty more like them:
Brexit questions, 1: How many new trade deals will we need? How many people will be needed to work on each? How many people have we got?
Brexit questions, 2: How many tax treaties will need the renegotiated as a result of Brexit? How many people does each take? How many have we got?
Brexit questions, 3: How many trade deals has the UK signed in the last ten years? How long did each take to conclude, on average?
Brexit questions, 4: How many laws will be changed by The Great Repeal Act? How much time will parliament be given to discussing it? How much time is that for each law change?
Brexit questions, 5: What value of tariffs do we collect now on imports to the UK? Which countries give rise to the top 10 payments? Are we planning new trade deals with any of them? What will the impact on revenue be?
Brexit questions, 6: How many EU nationals work in the UK now? How many are planned for 2020? How will those EU nationals wanting to work in the NHS then apply?
Brexit questions, 7: How many EU nationals work in UK universities now? How many are planned for 2020? How will those EU nationals wanting to work in our universities then apply?
Brexit questions, 8: What is the expected impact of UK residents forced to return to live in this country from EU on the UK housing shortage?
Brexit questions, 9: How many additional border staff will be needed after Brexit? How much will that cost? If a balanced budget is sought what budget will be cut to pay for this?
Brexit questions, 10: How many additional staff will be required at HMRC to process tariff and trade data as a result of Brexit? How much revenue will they raise? What will this cost?
Brexit questions, 11: How much will the cost to business be of having to manage multiple trade deals and tariff arrangements?
Brexit questions, 12: The Supreme Court said they could not rule on relationships with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. What, though, will be done to keep then in the Union?
Brexit questions, 13: How much will a visa for a UK person to visit Europe cost after Brexit?
Brexit questions, 14: Why is free movement of people with the US good news when it isn't with the EU when both would be conditions of trade deals.
Brexit questions, 15: How much will it cost to create UK regulatory agencies to replace all those we have previously relied on in the EU?
Brexit questions, 16: How much will the Brexit departments and those staff engaged in Brexit in other departments cost between now and 2020, split down by year?
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Re. Q3. I thought UK was not allowed to conclude its own trade deals while a member of the EU single market. Am I wrong?
The question highlights the fact we have no capacity to do this, at all, as a result
I doubt the government is either willing or able to answer any of your 16 questions. The combined cost of all these measures will be formidable as well as another £60 billion the UK has to pay to the EU before actually leaving.
No white paper = Rhubarb.
Would the answers to these questions make any difference to the opinions of those who are implacably against Brexit in any form?
Here’s a quick go at them as I’d expect David Davis to answer them were someone to put them as a set of written questions.
1. Main one as immediate priority is with EU and Department for Exiting the EU dealing with this with co-operation from the existing large numbers of civil servants in other departments who have responsibility for areas within EU competence. Others would be matter for government and Parliament post-Brexit. Liam Fox’s department has been established and staffed to deal with non-EU deals.
2. None? Tax is outside the competence of the EU so current treaties will stand as they are .
3. None. UK is not currently entitled to enter into trade deals on its own behalf. That was one of the reasons for leaving.
4. None. The Great Repeal Bill will make current EU based regulations part of UK law independent of the TFEU binding the UK and provide for a mechanism for those regulations to be repealed by government and Parliament in accordance with what Parliament will pass into the Bill. No individual current EU laws will need to be discussed in substance any more than it was necessary to do so with UK regulations during the passage of the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994 or its successor Acts in 2001 and 2006.
5. This government believes in low tariff or tariff free global trade. It would not anticipate increasing the current levels of tariffs. It believes that the freedom to reduce tariffs in the context of individual trade deals has the potential to increase the volume and value of trade for the benefit of the UK and its global partners. The detail and scope of any such changes would depend upon future negotiation but the base case is the status quo with the government committed to making no change which would not be a net positive to the UK economy in the round.
6. ONS data available. There is no plan for the number in 2020. The government will take control over immigration to ensure that the UK is able to continue to attract people to meet genuine demand and will ensure that the process for such migration will not be unduly onerous. It is noteworthy that many of those who claim that adding bureaucracy to the process for EU workers to come and provide the valuable services to the NHS they currently do at the same time warn of UK doctors and nurses being ready and willing to emigrate to Australia and New Zealand, despite the fact that both of those countries also have controls on immigration and the related bureaucracy.
7. As for 6. It is also worth remembering that the UK has many of the highest rated universities in the world and has done so since before the UK joined the EU. It has always attracted many of the brightest scholars from around the world and the government will expect it to continue to do so. Cambridge University, for instance, has produced more Nobel Prize Winners than the entire French University sector.
8. The government does not anticipate that UK citizens will be forced by the EU to return to the UK and looks forward to this being confirmed during the negotiations.
9. The UK already operates border controls. he government will make appropriate provision and these will be open to scrutiny and debate at the time of the relevant Budget.
10. Unlikely to be significant in the context of HMRC’s budget. The government will make appropriate provision and these will be open to scrutiny and debate at the time of the relevant Budget.
11. Regulatory compliance costs will be considered during the negotiations and the passage of the relevant legislation. The government is committed to reducing regulatory burdens and increasing the opportunities for business so the expectation and intention is for there to be over the medium term overall reductions in compliance costs. In the shorter term, the phased release from burdensome EU regulations for purely domestic businesses will provide a boost to our SME sector.
12. The government is a strong supporter of the Union and believes that we are stronger together. It will, as it did in the Scots Referendum, campaign to ensure that the Union stays intact. It is for those who wish to break it to secure the democratic mandate that would enable that to occur. We do not believe such a mandate exists in any of the 4 nations.
13. The government is not planning to introduce visa charges. It would be a matter for other EU countries to decide whether to impose visa charges but many do not do so currently for non-EU citizens, nor did they do so in respect of the UK prior to either their or our accession. This may be a matter for negotiation but we do not believe it would be in the interests of the EU to introduce visa charges for UK citizens.
14. The government is somewhat sceptical that the US would under any President accept free movement of people into the US or require free movement of US people to the UK.
15. Many such agencies in practice have their areas of activity implemented by UK agencies already (eg DG Competition’s investigative powers are also exercised by the CMA). There may be some increase in costs but this is expected to be negligible in the context of the saving of the UK’s current net contribution to the EU budget.
16. This data will be published and available for scrutiny and debate as for any other element of public spending in the relevant Budget.
Those may be the answers given
When we will know they are either clueless of lying
Re the possible replies to questions 9 and 10 – there is no way the Government will make “appropriate” arrangements for Customs controls and HMRC staffing – they have never given the Revenue authorities enough staff or resources – and I speak as an ex Customs and Excise officer
So, botzarelli, are you saying that our host, a Professor of Political Economy doesn’t know what he’s talking about?
It’s happened before
It will happen again
I got as far as 1. Your answer doesn’t actually answer the question foes it! And the answer – quick google – is that the EU has trade deals with around 50 countries so presumably the actual answer to Richard’s question is 50. Does Liam really have enough staff to deal with that already? I think not.
Really can’t be bothered to go through the rest .
See e.g. European Commission memo from December 2013. http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2012/november/tradoc_150129.pdf#page=6
These questions should have been asked in the referendum campaign. It’s too late now.
No it isn’t
They are questions about the management process, not the principle
Exactly!
Picking up on your point about your questions being focused on management process rather than priciple, Richard, and accepting that you rightly highlight cost and people in your sub questions, there are of course also a broad set of questions relating to what are nowadays frequently referred to as ‘back office’ functions. That is, the organisational structures, processes, procedures and technologies that enable people to carry out all the functions and activities required by the various systems that your questions identify, and thus deliver the required outcomes.
Where new, revised or upscaled systems are required – for example, where we may have a range of immigration or visa statuses (e.g. it would seem likely that eastern European countries are treated differently to western Europe given the hostility of the media and many of my fellow Brits to such people), for farm subsidies (whatever they might be, of course), new regulatory agencies (assuming we have any – I suspect heavy lobbying by the usual suspects to take this “opportunity” to do away with such “red tape”) – and so on, these alone will take years to develop and/or refocus. And we should not forget that given the pretty poor record of government IT projects – even where they have years to develop and implement such systems (e.g. the DWP and universal credit) – doing this kind of organisational reengineering in a hurry will lead to a series of very costly failures.
In short, even if we accept that some aspects of post Brexit policy may be clear by April 2019, and the related systems have therefore been developed, in many, many cases this will not be possible. That means significant elements of government and public adminstration will have to run on interim systems that are likely to be far from fit for purpose. And this situation may/will stretch out for many years. Of course, we will be told, once again, that the scale (and in many cases complexity) of the required changes can be “fixed” with new technology (as with the closure and regionalisation programme of HMRC). But as I noted above, history tells us this is the argument of charlatans and the government equivalent of snake-oil salesmen. Staffing will be key. But whether a Tory government so wedded to a small state can stomach such an admission is quite likely a step too far. Consequently, we can expect Brexit to be a goldmine for those organisations involved in contracting out and the marketisation of the state/public services. But then again, it’s been a very long time now since things were any different.
You are depressingly right Ivan
It is very good of botzarelli to take the time to attempt to address your questions in detail.
However,the fact remains that the benefits of immigration & loose border control to a free market principled Govt far outweigh the value of implementing management procedures as outlined above. That’s why they do it (or don’t)
Furthermore why would a Tory government intent on shrinking the state wish to increase the kind of public sector roles required to achieve the above ? They dont and they wont. It doesnt stack up logically or financially. Its like Trumps wall it
Just like Trump’s stupid wall, this is all a pointless solution to an imaginary problem, if it gets built, just like Brexit it will be a monument to hubris, stupidity & lies.
Brexit questions, 11: How much will the cost to business be of having to manage multiple trade deals and tariff arrangements?
There’s no *having* to do this. The cost to the UK could be 0 – simply open the borders to free-trade. That’s it. Don’t worry about reciprocity, its irrelevant. You’ll get richer even if the other guy closes his borders to UK imports.
If the UK government *chooses* to impose these barriers on its citizens, then that’s a choice it freely made, but there is no ‘have to’ here.
Just because tariffs have always been done doesn’t mean they always have to be done.
But that has a cost: we do have tariffs now
No deals means no access at lower rates for exports
Your argument makes no sense at all unless recklessness is your policy
I think this example clearly highlights many of the problems facing people after Brexit, what happens in mainland Britain,or British expats living overseas are not the only question on the table.
Gibraltar, as most people will know is a British Overseas Territory and headland, on Spain’s south coast.
98% of the full-time residents voted to remain in the EU in the referendum. There are over 10,000 Spanish people who cross over into Gibraltar every day to go to work.
The questions you raise seem to fit this example very well.