David Davis has revealed the government has not assessed the impact of Brexit on different key sectors of the British economy - despite repeated suggestions by the Brexit Secretary lots of work was being done.
It was an incredible moment of political theatre at the Brexit select committee hearing ...
Tory and DUP MPs have spared Davis’ blushes by blocking claims he did not honour instructions to hand over the work the Government had carried out on the impact of Brexit - but he still faces claims he misled Parliament.
Here are five times Davis highlighted similar-sounding studies:
"We currently have in place an assessment of 51 sectors of the economy. We are looking at those one by one, but the aim at the end is that this will inform the negotiating approach so that no one gets hurt."
December 2016, David Davis: "We are in the midst of carrying out about 57 sets of analyses, each of which has implications for individual parts of 85% of the economy."
— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) December 6, 2017
December 2017, David Davis: "The usefulness of such detailed impact assessments is near zero."
"We are in the midst of carrying out about 57 sets of analyses, each of which has implications for individual parts of 85% of the economy… everything except sectors that are not affected by international trade."
David Davis, H of C, February 2017:
— David Allen Green (@davidallengreen) November 28, 2017
“We continue to analyse the impact of our exit across the breadth of the UK economy, covering more than 50 sectors —I think it was 58 at the last count—to shape our negotiating position.”
In emphasis:
"impact..58 at the last count"
'We continue to analyse the impact of our exit across the breadth of the UK economy, covering more than 50 sectors - I think it was 58 at the last count - to shape our negotiating position.'
"That data's being gathered, we've got 50, nearly 60 sector analyses already done, we've got planning work going on in the customs, we've got planning work going on 22 other issues which are critical, 127 all told."
David Davis' evidence to the Brexit Committee in October, when he was quite happy to talk about the impact assessments that exist in "excruciating detail". Now he says they don't exist. This is madness. pic.twitter.com/HsFHQqMwuj
— Dan Bloom (@danbloom1) December 6, 2017