A move to heavily edit critical reports on the economic aftermath of Brexit will have on key UK industrial sectors shows the British government “does not want ordinary people to have access to information,” told a leading political analyst.
Critics have accused the UK government of deliberately leaving out “politically embarrassing” information from the 58 documents it has prepared to examine the effect leaving the European Union will have across a range of British businesses.
The decision by Brexit minister David Davis to omit certain information from the key analyses has prompted opposition parties to raise the matter in an emergency question to the House of Commons on Tuesday, November 28, with the possibility of contempt charges being actively considered against the minister.
The story has been discussed by politicians and commentators on social media.
In an interview, Adam Garrie, managing editor of The Duran, described the latest Brexit developments as yet another blow to a “scarecrow” government.
“On the one hand, most discerning members of the public know that the economy is already in trouble and this is just based on the speculation about ‘how bad Brexit is going to be.’ Under any circumstances, a big change like Brexit would create economic jitters, but the reason that it is now almost inevitably going to be a disaster is because of the disastrous incompetence of the current UK government. The fact that there are so many redactions in the document, shows that the government does not want ordinary people to have the information that they are privy to. It smacks of elitism and also of shame. It is yet another blow to a scarecrow government.”
The benevolent interpretation of the move is that the UK government have hidden material potentially useful to the other side in the negotiations or want to avoid putting what may be rather speculative analyses in the public domain, especially where there is considerable uncertainty about what sort of deal can be done, told Professor Iain Begg, at the European Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
“But the more likely reason is to disguise potentially awkward estimates of damage to certain sectors and the economy as a whole,” he added.
The Brexit minister David Davis insisted earlier he was withholding the information because he had “received no assurances from the (Brexit) committee regarding how any information passed will be used.”