Secret plans have been drawn up by Michael Gove’s Brexit ‘war Cabinet’ to freeze business in the Commons next month to stop Remainers hijacking No Deal, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The legal framework needed to leave the European Union on October 31 could be passed by MPs afterwards, Ministers were told on Tuesday.
Theresa May’s Government had previously insisted that five separate Bills – covering customs, immigration and trade – were needed before any kind of Brexit.
Secret plans: Mr Gove has drawn up the scheme in a bid to drive through Brexit
But a new paper presented by Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg has destroyed that notion. Instead, he says a series of ‘statutory instruments’ – legal tweaks done with the flick of a ministerial pen without a vote – would be enough.
The stark decree will infuriate MPs of all parties trying to sabotage Boris Johnson’s plan for No Deal, and Downing Street will face accusations that it will leave the UK in a legal limbo.
Mr Gove, who chairs daily meetings of the EU Exit Operations committee and is in charge of Whitehall’s No Deal planning, has told Government departments to ‘minimise legislation’ before November to avoid showdowns with Remainer Labour and Lib Dem MPs, who plan to join forces with Tory rebels to thwart Mr Johnson.
The Prime Minister has pledged that the UK will leave the EU ‘by any means possible’ on Halloween. But MPs will return on September 3 for two weeks vowing to block Brexit.
Anti-Brexit campaigners such as former Tory Attorney General Dominic Grieve will try to wrestle control of the parliamentary calendar to extend Commons hours in a bid to derail No Deal, possibly cancelling a planned recess during the party conference season. Mr Gove is leading the charge on No Deal planning and he used the first full meeting of the new Cabinet to attack former Chancellor Philip Hammond. He declared that ‘previously there had been those who had seen preparation for No Deal as a distraction’.
Since then Mr Gove has chaired a dozen meetings of the Brexit war Cabinet – known as XO – which meets in a room in the basement of the Cabinet Office every weekday at 10.30am.
Ministers who are away can use video or phone links, as Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab did throughout last week during his visit to the US, Canada and Mexico to explore new trade deals after Brexit.
Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill and Mr Johnson’s powerful aide Dominic Cummings sit in on XO meetings, with Revenue & Customs chief Sir Jonathan Thompson the only mandarin with a full-time position.
Four large screens are updated throughout the meeting and display ‘actions’ for departments and Ministers to take.
Pushing ahead with Brexit: Mr Johnson has been forging ahead with planning for October 31
One committee member said: ‘It’s pacy stuff. We are running through a lot of detail, with decisions made very quickly. We have sorted out more in two weeks than in the whole previous year. Before, the Treasury was blocking everything, demanding to know what the business case of every tiny thing was, whereas things are serious now and ten to 15 actions are agreed every day.’
The MoS can also reveal that the central tenets of the Government’s No Deal planning have been agreed by XO. A source who attends the meetings said: ‘All decisions are framed through protecting security, flow and revenue, in that order.’
Public safety and national security are paramount, followed by keeping Britain’s trade flowing and protecting the revenue of the Government and British businesses. XO has also adopted a ‘continuity approach’, with the UK recognising EU standards in the short term to avoid trading chaos.
Inspection of goods coming into the UK will be limited, with Britain adopting Brussels regulations temporarily on imports, medicines testings, live animal exports and data sharing.
The stance was adopted after lobbying by the car industry, which warned that production at UK plants would be shut down if there were dramatic changes immediately after exit day. Arrangements for a five-month standstill on airline, rail and haulage rules, which were agreed in principle with the EU before the abortive attempt to leave in March, will also be reconsidered.
Mr Gove’s committee has full control over Operation Yellowhammer, the codename for No Deal contingency planning, as well as Operation Kingfisher, an emergency support package for British businesses affected by No Deal, which was first revealed by this newspaper in February. The avian code words were drawn at random by a Whitehall computer and they have now been joined by another – Black Swan – for worst-case scenarios.
Last week, Mr Cummings and Mr Johnson’s policy adviser Oliver Lewis summoned all department aides to No 10 and gave them 48 hours to unearth every potential ‘Black Swan’ problem.
Mr Cummings said he did not care ‘how bad the problems are as long as you tell us’. And he warned that if major issues were unearthed later, he would sack the special advisers and ministerial aides responsible. He warned them not to allow the Civil Service to cause difficulties, saying: ‘You have been personally authorised by the office of the Prime Minister to undertake this work, and if anyone has a problem with that, tell them to call me.’
Potential ‘Black Swans’ include businesses suffering from ‘No Deal fatigue’ or a ‘disbelief that it will occur’, so dragging their feet in planning.
There are major fears that in the long term, two of the UK’s six main oil refineries could close because imports would become cheaper, triggering a ‘significant impact on local economies and regional fuel supply’.
The Brexit war cabinet has accepted that food prices will rise in the case of No Deal, with the increased costs continuing into the next decade, and it has been warned that the courts face being overwhelmed with cases of increased ‘volume and complexity’ due to changes from EU to UK law.
But the main concern is still the Irish border, where Ministers have agreed a short-term model of ‘no checks with limited exceptions’.
But they admit this is ‘unsustainable in the long term’ and a new agreement with Dublin and Brussels will be needed. In a chilling warning, the Brexit planners were told last week that No Deal would see Irish ‘criminals and dissident groups operating with greater threat and impunity’.