When Tory MPs say it’s not in the ‘national interest’ to release the Brexit impact assessment, they mean it's not in their interests

Steve Baker makes the debating point that his opponents wish to reverse Brexit. Well, so what if they do? It is a legitimate cause in a democratic society

Brexit Secretary David Davis (PA)

One of the smaller but more frightening details about the leaked Government Brexit analysis is that the Brexit minister Steve Baker said he had never seen it. What is more, his Secretary of State, David Davis, had not seen it until the day before the leak.

This is despite the fact that the impact assessment was supposed to be a “cross-departmental exercise” and was prepared by officials across Whitehall for the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU). Just for a change it appears that the public knows as much, indeed more, about what will happen to the country after Brexit than the ministers who are so lamentably piloting the UK out of its relationship with the EU.

This latest revelation comes on top of Mr Davis’s cheerful renunciation to MPs of his previously rosy view of the UK’s prospects outside the EU – from before he was a minister – and his backtracking on whether impact assessments had in fact been made. He said they had been made in “excruciating” detail. Then he said they were simply non-existent, and now that one has been prepared Mr Davis has not had the opportunity to review it.

Hilary Benn and his Brexit Select Committee, which recently questioned Mr Davis, need to haul him up again to explain what ministers do and do not know about the likely consequences of their policies – and why they won’t share that information with the rest of the country.

Thus far Mr Davis has all too readily lived up to his BBC Radio 4 satirical alter ego “Brexit Bulldog”, a well-meaning and chirpy creature but hopelessly misguided, way out of his depth amid the cold bureaucratic cunning of Michel Barnier. It is almost a cruelly mismatched contest.

While Mr Barnier has the negotiating power of the EU27 at his disposal, Mr Davis and his colleagues are armed only with Britain’s hopelessly weak negotiating hand. Things couldn’t really be more dire.

This is no way to run a country, whatever your political prejudices and whatever view is taken of the as-yet-unknown shape of Brexit. Mr Baker told the Commons that to release the assessments – which of course are already partially in the public domain – would “not be in the national interest”. Which means that it is in the national interest to find out only after the event that 5 per cent or 8 per cent or some other chunk of household income is going to be destroyed over the next decade or so.

Having spread such misleading propaganda during the referendum campaign, the dedicated Leavers in Government seem determined not to release the truth about Brexit even when they know it and when the work is commissioned by themselves from their own civil servants.

That is not a democratic way to run the country.

Mr Baker’s minimal concession to the pressure rightly placed on him by the Opposition’s Keir Starmer was to offer publication of the data once the Brexit process was over – by which time it will be much too late to make much impact on policy.

Mr Baker makes the debating point that his opponents wish to reverse Brexit. Well, so what if they do? It is a legitimate cause in a democratic society, and the public, and national, interest lies in maximum transparency. It is only on the basis of having the most accurate, if flawed, intelligence available that ministers can make informed decisions, and the public and Parliament can choose to support them or not.

What Mr Baker – an obscure but dangerous personality who has quite a track record in supporting Brexit at any and all costs – really means is that disclosing these impact assessments (there may be many more) is not in the Conservative Party’s interest. That is plainly the case, as they serve only to destroy what little is left of the May Government’s credibility and that of its central policy.

Mr Davis, Mr Baker and indeed Theresa May could choose to take the sensible, rational course demonstrated by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney. Of course all economy forecasts and impact assessments are prone to the turn of events, but that does not render them meaningless. In his evidence to the House of Lords, Mr Carney stated: “I’m going to reiterate the point about getting the broad economics right, which I think we did. We got the broad economic channels right, and taking what I, even with the wisdom of hindsight, very firmly believe was the right course of action to support the economy and to balance the return of inflation sustainably to target but also to support the economy during a period of some uncertainty.”

Mr Carney, a dutiful public servant, rightly sees his main responsibility as putting the Bank's best data and judgements in front of the British people. Is it too much to expect the clowns running the DExEU to do the same?