Don’t panic! We’ll deal with no deal
Ministers’ plans to keep homes and industry running if Britain crashes out of the EU are patchy and sometimes alarming
Tim Shipman, Mark Hookham
July 29 2018, 12:01am, The Sunday Times

Plans agreed at the Chequers cabinet summit to publish reports every week through the summer detailing what a “no-deal Brexit” would mean for Britain have been scrapped — after warnings that the public would panic and never vote Conservative again.
Downing Street sources confirmed last night that a series of papers advising businesses, homeowners, farmers, hauliers and holidaymakers how to prepare are now likely to be published on the same day in late August, rather than dripped out over a period of six weeks.
The change of plan highlights the seething rivalries and, at times, troubling details of Brexit preparation. The no-deal publication plan was originally designed to placate Brexiteers, who were keen to show Brussels the UK was ready to walk away. But this weekend they accused civil servants of plotting a new “Project Fear” campaign which threatened to turn MPs and voters against Brexit altogether.
An investigation by The Sunday Times has found that government preparations for a no-deal scenario, in which the UK left the EU without a trade deal, are both patchy and, in some regards, hair-raising.
Brexiteers are furious that the preparations have been under way in earnest only since the Chequers deal earlier this month. Steve Baker, the Brexit minister who quit because he considered the Chequers deal a sellout to Brussels, had fought for months to get government departments to take the planning seriously. “As early as October last year Steve was trying to create a no-deal moment,” said one Brexiteer. “Steve threatened to resign in March because Downing Street kept banning people from saying anything about what we were doing and the Treasury wouldn’t pay for it.
“There are three things here: drawing up plans for the work that needed to be done,” said a Brexit department source, “implementing the plans by hiring staff and putting the IT systems in place; and, thirdly, talking about the plans. We’ve done lots of the first, a little of the second and almost none of the third.”
Baker’s other problem was that he could not persuade May or Oliver Robbins, her chief negotiator, to use the dangers to the EU of a no-deal Brexit as a lever with the Brussels negotiator, Michel Barnier. Last Christmas, Baker commissioned work on how much it would cost the other 27 countries in lost trade. “Robbins simply refused to raise it,” said one source. “It found that the cost to the EU in the event of no deal was far greater than the cost to the UK, but the cost to no single country was greater than to us.”
Since Chequers, the new Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, has injected fresh urgency into the work. But the government is in a race against time. “If Raab gets a grip of this he can make Barnier believe he’s ready and there’s an outside chance he actually would be ready,” a ministerial aide said. “With six more months we would be ready, but we may not have six months.”
As The Sunday Times revealed in June, the risk assessments of what might happen in the event of a no-deal Brexit are alarming, with shortages of fuel and medicines likely in remote areas and ministers discussing the stockpiling of food.
The contingency planning also includes calling in the army to help communities suffering critical shortages.
A minister said: “You would have to use all your services to provide essential supplies to people. The elderly and vulnerable would be in a difficult position. It will be the end of March but it might still be cold. You’ve got to think about the energy supply and keeping the lights on.”
A senior Whitehall source compared a no-deal Brexit to a severe weather crisis: “When the Beast from the East was here with the snow, in the northeast and Scotland, the armed forces up there ferried NHS workers to vulnerable people in their homes and to work.”
In the NHS, bosses are planning to put the health service on a permanent winter-crisis footing. A senior source said: “We line up non-EU sources of drugs and stockpile drugs in preparation for a winter crisis, so we can use the same model to deal with no-deal Brexit.”
There are also concerns about the shelf-life of medicines which cross borders. Leaving Euratom, the EU nuclear materials regulator, could create problems for the supply of cancer drugs. Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, has warned that insulin for diabetics could be in short supply.
Mike Thompson, chief executive of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, said one company was having to revalidate their supply chain for ingredients for 15,000 medicines because the ingredients come from abroad. He added: “Half of the medicines approved across Europe last year require a specific temperature control right through the supply chain. They cannot be stuck at borders for too long. One medicine has only got a half-life of 11 days.”
Some of the most noticeable consequences of no deal would come at the borders. Plans for emergency lorry parks on the M20 and M26 and the disused Manston airfield in Kent are “unworkable” and could lead to “public disorder”, it has been claimed.
If customs checks are imposed, 10,000 lorries a day could be affected. The plan to use Manston has alarmed freight companies and port managers. One source said parking lorries at the airport was “nuts” and “just won’t work” since those released from Manston would have to snake their way to Dover along a 19-mile stretch of the A256, which has 12 roundabouts and in parts is a single carriageway. “If you start to move high volumes of freight down that route, it will be come snarled very, very quickly,” said the source. Between 400 and 500 lorries an hour need to arrive in Dover to fill the ferries and keep them to schedule. Just 80 an hour could get there from Manston.
Lorries attempting to dodge the queues would be ordered to the back of the queue or to Manston, creating flashpoints. In 2015, some lorry drivers drove their vehicles at police officers in an attempt to force their way into the port.
Meanwhile, questions are mounting over how the Border Force at Heathrow and other airports would cope. Passengers at Heathrow have been forced to wait on aircraft and held up for three hours to have their passports checked. A Border Force source said: “If we cannot cope with queues this summer, how will we cope in March 2019 and a crash-out?”
The government has demanded that companies and industry groups involved in Brexit planning sign non-disclosure agreements in an attempt to prevent alarming details leaking out.
That explains why the plan to publicise no-deal preparations throughout the summer has been canned. The original plan was scrapped after a meeting last week chaired by Philip Rycroft, the senior mandarin in the Brexit department. A source said: “People will shit themselves and think they want a new referendum or an election or think the Tory party shouldn’t govern again. MPs are saying: ‘If this is done badly, it could hurt us like sleaze did in the 1990s.’”
The prospects of a no-deal departure are troubling civil servants, who expect to be blamed for failing to get the country ready. Staff working for Robbins plan to jump ship at the end of the year.
The risk of no deal has also created tensions between Robbins and politicians. He has already clashed with Jeremy Hunt, the new foreign secretary. Hunt planned to make a speech in Berlin last week, but Robbins demanded to see the text and objected to the tone of Hunt’s warnings to the EU that they should co-operate or face a crash-out. Hunt used his talking points at a press conference instead.
Sources close to Raab insist that the new Brexit secretary made some gains in his talks with Barnier, extracting an acknowledgment that Britain would not pay its £39bn divorce bill unless a trade agreement was forthcoming.
No 10 was also encouraged when May met the Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, on Friday and he agreed that a summit in Salzburg on September 20 can be used to talk Brexit — raising the prospect that the EU member states will give Barnier greater latitude to make concessions. May’s Austrian visit was enlivened when a photographer approached the PM and asked her to sign photos of herself. “There’s obviously a niche market for May memorabilia,” said one aide.
Yet Brexiteers are concerned Britain’s weak negotiating stance means the European Commission will bully Britain into something like Norway’s relationship with the EU and predict May would try to force such a move through the Commons using Labour votes. “She’s Theresa the appeaser,” said one Brexiteer.
If a no-deal turns to disaster, the PM will have plenty of people to appease.
Norway option may offer safe haven
Tory MPs have begun discussing whether the “Norway option” could be Britain’s best “safe landing zone” if the alternative is crashing out of the EU without a deal.
The idea has been floated by Brexiteer columnists and Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s former joint chief of staff. MPs say the idea, which would see the UK stay in the single market, could give an off-the-shelf alternative to trading under World Trade Organisation rules. Even Michael Gove, who is no admirer of the idea, has been heard to wonder whether that is where the UK might end up as a result of the balance of power in the Commons.
Michel Barnier, the chief EU negotiator thinks he can force Britain to stay in the European Economic Area, which includes Norway. The problem is that the plan violates May’s pledge to end major payments to the EU budget and freedom of movement. However, fans say a Norway-style deal could let the UK curb immigration from the EU.
STOCKPILED DRUGS AND FOOD: PREPARING FOR THE WORST
Small businesses
Up to 250,000 small firms will be asked to start making customs declarations in a dry run for Brexit
Armed forces
On standby to assist in delivering fuel, food and medicines to far-flung communities
Supermarkets
Warning suppliers to begin stockpiling products to prevent shortages in big stores
NHS Hospitals
to go on a year-round winter crisis footing with stockpiled drugs and others sourced from outside the EU
Farming
A new IT system is in place to make payments to rural landowners once EU subsidies cease. Thousands more staff have been recruited. But there are fears about animal and food exports being disrupted
Freight Vehicles
bound for Channel ports and the tunnel will queue in lorry parks on the M20, M26 and at Manston airport in Kent. An estimated 10,000 lorries a day passing through the ports could require customs checks
Channel ports
There is no space at the port of Dover for extra lorry parking. It currently takes an average of two minutes to process each lorry. Increasing that figure by another two minutes would create a 17-mile queue
Airports Passengers
are already queuing for up to three hours at Heathrow to have passports checked. The Home Office is recruiting another 1,300 Border Force staff to cope