No-Deal Brexit: Cross-channel Freight — House of Commons, 2019-05-02
Topic: International Affairs
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Thank you for granting the urgent question, Mr Speaker I wonder whether we will ever get to the bottom of this whole mess. Truthfully, the Secretary of State’s statement does not give us any more clarification on what the Government are doing in respect of no-deal preparations. We were told that the initial contracts were part of emergency procurement for the unforeseen scenario of a no-deal Brexit, despite our having been told that the Government had prepared. We were then expected to believe the logic behind handing an emergency service contract to a company with no ships and no financial backing. In response to an urgent question, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care advised us that the contracts were needed for shipments of priority goods such as medicines, and the Transport Secretary has repeated that in his statement today. If that was the case, why did the contracts kick in automatically on 29 March, rather than being linked to an actual no-deal scenario, whenever that might occur? What exactly did the contracts procure? Why has it taken a month for the latest contracts to be reviewed and cancelled, at a cost of £43 million? What are the Government doing in respect of the next possible no-deal Brexit date of 31 October? If the previous contracts had to be entered into in December for a March kick-in date, it is clear that planning needs to happen now. It is obvious that the Government should be working on preparations right now In the emergency debate on the contracts, I asked about the possibility of further legal action and the Secretary of State assured me that there would be none. "A hae ma doots" is what I said at the time, so it comes as no surprise that we now learn that P&O Ferries is suing the Government. When did the Secretary of State find out about P&O’s intentions? Where has that case got to—is it going to go through the courts, or will there be a cave-in and another £33 million settlement I know that Governments do not normally publish legal advice, but with this turn of events we are clearly in exceptional circumstances, so will the Government provide or publish the legal advice that they have had over this period? What independent reviews are the Government undertaking to understand the blunders that have happened and to learn lessons so that this does not happen again The Secretary of State repeated what the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) said earlier in Transport questions: that the £43 million cost of cancelling the ferry contracts is only 1% of the Brexit preparation costs, as if it does not matter. In actual fact, overall the ferry contracts will probably cost up to £120 million, depending on the P&O settlement, so when will somebody become accountable for this waste of money? It is not a negligible amount of money; it is a lot of money Many people ask me why the Secretary of State is still in post after all his blunders. I cannot answer that, but I can ask that he does the right thing, finally takes responsibility and steps aside.