Whitehall does not have enough skilled officials to get Britain ready for a no deal Brexit in March, senior officials warned today.
The claim that even if enough money is made available the country will not be prepared is will alarm Remain supporters and anger Brexiteers.
In other developments today, EU diplomats taunted the UK could face chaos within days if no deal is struck in time for Brexit day on March 29 next year.
Whitehall does not have enough skilled officials to get Britain ready for a no deal Brexit in March, senior officials warned today (file image)
Prime Minister Theresa May has ordered her Cabinet to meet on September 13 to work out a plan for critical areas not yet covered by no deal plans.
The chances of there being no Brexit agreement have risen dramatically in recent weeks amid a continued stalemate in the negotiations.
A deadline for an outline deal at October’s EU summit is now widely expected to be missed despite continuing negotiations in Brussels.
The Prime Minister has ordered her Cabinet to meet on September 13 to work out a plan for critical areas not yet covered by no deal plans.
But a senior Government figure told The Times today: ‘This isn’t about the money it’s about people.
‘You can’t take the sort of numbers you need out of the government’s current operations without them falling over.’
Senior EU diplomats told the Sun that no would mean ‘no flights to and from the UK, no ships, no economic activity and no financial transactions’ within days of Brexit.
One ambassador predicted the chaos for businesses and ordinary people in the UK would get so bad the situation would quickly become untenable for the Government.
And a senior EU official said Brussels negotiators were banking on it being such a disaster that the ‘cycle of negotiations and the political dynamics will be taken over by the real world’
The crisis meeting comes as Dominic Raab (pictured on August 23) risked a Cabinet row with Philip Hammond after questioning the worth of economic forecasts about Brexit, days after the Chancellor warned that no deal could cause major damage
Theresa May has called her no deal crisis summit amid fears the row between Brexiteers and Remainers is undermining negotiations with Brussels.
The meeting comes as Dominic Raab risked a Cabinet row with Philip Hammond after questioning the worth of economic forecasts about Brexit, days after the Chancellor warned that no deal could cause major damage.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, the Brexit Secretary said that some projections needed to be treated with ‘a measure of caution’, adding that GDP estimates for 2019 ‘have been revised up.
Mr Hammond was accused of launching a ‘dodgy Project Fear’ on Thursday when he suggested that GDP could fall and borrowing could be around £80 billion a year under a scenario in which Britain resorted to World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms after a no-deal Brexit.
Without naming Mr Hammond, Mr Raab told the Sunday Times: ‘I’m always chary of any forecast because most of them have been proved to be wrong.’
Mr Hammond (pictured on June 6) was accused of launching a ‘dodgy Project Fear’ on Thursday when he suggested that GDP could fall and borrowing could be around £80 billion a year under a scenario in which Britain resorted to World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms after a no-deal Brexit
The newspaper also claimed that the Cabinet will meet to discuss no-deal Brexit preparations over fears that a row between Brexiteers and Remainers was undermining negotiations with Brussels.
Mr Hammond’s comments in a letter to Conservative MP Nicky Morgan, chairwoman of the Treasury Select Committee, emerged hours after Mr Raab had attempted to play down the likelihood of a no-deal Brexit while outlining the impact of such a scenario via a series of technical papers.
The Chancellor said that his initial January analysis on GDP and borrowing was undergoing a ‘process of refinement’ ahead of a parliamentary vote on any deal, noting scenarios which have higher barriers to trade with the EU are expected to have a ‘more damaging effect’ on the economy and public finances.
He also defended the Government’s preferred approach, which was outlined in a White Paper following a Cabinet summit at Chequers, by saying the economic and fiscal impacts of this would be ‘substantially better’ than no deal.
Meanwhile, a former European Council president Herman Van Rompuy, warned that a no-deal Brexit could cause the United Kingdom itself to collapse.
The ex-Belgian prime Minister told the Observer that crashing out without a deal was an ‘an existential threat to the UK itself’.