David Davis did tell the Brexit Commons Select Committee this week that the government has not (since he became Brexit Secretary) undertaken an economic assessment of what will happen if there is no deal with the EU over Brexit.
The Brexit secretary says there have been discussions throughout different government departments of what would happen in the case of no deal being reached with the EU—and how the government could mitigate the impact of that.
His reasoning for not having done an economic assessment yet was that no agreement has yet been reached within government on exactly what their plan for mitigation would be if negotiations failed. He said it was unwise to attempt to predict the future of the British economy (and in particular the effects of falling back to default World Trade Organisation arrangements) without knowing what that strategy would be.
Mr Davis talked about implementation of electronic, speedy border checks for “trusted traders” to encourage easy cross border trade as an example of what he meant by mitigation.
He also said, “I have a fairly clear view of how it will work out. I just do not quantify it yet. We will give a quantification later on, but it is quite plain how it will work out.”