Department for Exiting the European Union — House of Commons, 2018-02-26
Topic: Government Operations
Thomas Sheppard (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). I hope to respond in a minute to some of the points that he made about the customs union. However, before I start to talk about DExEU and Brexit, I want to make some general observations about the process in which we are engaged during our two days of debate on the estimates When I, and most of my colleagues, came to the House in 2015, we were quite shocked by the lack of financial scrutiny of the Executive in the Chamber. Since we became the third party, we have pressed for change in the way in which the estimates are considered. I therefore welcome the baby steps taken this year, in that we are at least able to focus on a set of figures that relate to a Government Department and what it is doing, rather than discuss random topics that may or may not be related to budgetary matters. However, we still have a long way to go in holding the Executive to account financially and in terms of their policies I firmly believe that if we were the board of a large charitable organisation, the charity regulators would find us wanting in terms of our procedures for financial scrutiny and accountability. I also believe that if we were the board of a large corporation, our shareholders would be demanding action to improve our processes. I therefore hope that the steps we have taken this year are the beginning of a process, and we might one day get to a situation where the Government are required to produce a programme plan charting their future policies and their effects, and then each Department has to produce a programme plan, which each Select Committee can scrutinise along with the budget that goes with it. That is the process that the Scottish Government are engaged in, in terms of how they govern the responsibilities under their remit, and it is one that we could learn from and try to develop here in the years ahead What happens when we combine a rudimentary process of programme planning and financial planning with the complete absence of a set of policy objectives in the first place? The answer is DExEU, because here we have combined an absolute lack of planning and a financial mess. DExEU was set up in the summer of 2016 by a shell-shocked Government who frankly did not know what to do in implementing a referendum result that they did not expect. In a desperate desire to be seen to be doing something, they set up a brand, spanking new Department, with lots of new letterheads and people to write memos to each other, and lots of people employed to research and analyse something, the only problem being that there was no plan to be implemented In the absence of a plan to be implemented, we have gone from one chaos to another, and I share the Minister’s embarrassment. This must be the only Department in history that underspends its budget not by a couple of percentage points, but by 50% in its first year, and it has had to go to the Treasury to scale down its estimates of spending in the next financial year That is a phenomenal metaphor for the Government’s Brexit policy, because they do not know quite what they are doing. In the absence of their being able to play a co-ordination role in planning for Brexit, individual Departments have had to be allowed to do their own thing and try to deal with the consequences as best they can. That is why 90% of the amount of money being spent on Brexit preparations, or the lack of them, is not to be found in the Department supposedly responsible for co-ordinating preparations for Brexit. That is a ridiculous situation This, of course, is from a Government who have said not only that they will set up a brand new Department, but that money is no object for that Department. This is a Government who cannot find the money for our health service; a Government who are determined to squeeze down wages by pay restraint in the public sector and reduced living standards; a Government who have, for heaven’s sake, taken £30 a week of employment and support allowance from the most vulnerable people in our community—yet they can find £4 billion over the next few years to spend on preparing for Brexit. The problem is that the plans are so incomplete, and they do not know what they are doing, so they are even unable to spend the money.