Brexit: Michael Gove under fire for failing to publish no-deal dossier warning of food, fuel and medicine shortages

Fears were raised over the weekend that the Operation Yellowhammer document was being ‘watered down’

Michael Gove has come under fire after it emerged he had scrapped plans to publish a Whitehall dossier warning of food, fuel and medicine shortages in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

The cabinet minister had been expected to publish extracts from the Operation Yellowhammer contingency plans as part of his first regular no-deal update to MPs on Tuesday.

Fears were raised over the weekend that the document was being “watered down”, prompting an appeal to the UK’s top civil servant was urged to ensure the internal dossier was published in full.

The Liberal Democrats have written to Sir Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, to demand clarity over whether the public would be offered a “dodgy dossier that has reportedly been drafted to suit political agendas”.

But at a meeting of the government no-deal planning committee on Monday, ministers reportedly chose to put publication of the dossier on ice.

“The meeting didn’t go well,” a source told the Financial Times. “The whole thing was seen as far too pessimistic about no deal.”

It comes after the sensational leak of the Operation Yellowhammer dossier last month, which warned of shortages of supplies and chaos at borders in a no-deal Brexit scenario.

Mr Gove insisted at the time that the document was old – but a fresh leak of the dossier to the Daily Mail on Monday revealed it contained similar warnings about disruption in the UK crashes out of the EU without a deal.

But Hilary Benn, chair of the Commons Brexit committee, said: “A sanitised version of the Operation Yellowhammer report will not do.

“The government needs to be completely open and transparent with MPs and the public about the full implications of the damage that a no-deal Brexit would inflict on the country.”

Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman, also attacked the delay, saying: “This is an utter outrage. I was worried the document would be sanitised and had sought reassurances that it would not be, but the government are actually going a step further and trying to make it disappear.

“People at home are facing the very real prospect of medicine and food shortages in the event of a no-deal Brexit, the Conservatives’ Brexit policy, but Gove is refusing to be completely open and transparent about the detail of Operation Yellowhammer.”

In a Commons statement, Mr Gove described the Operation Yellowhammer dossier as depicting what a "reasonable" worst-case scenario of Brexit could cause.

"It is an exercise in anticipating what a reasonable worst case scenario might involve and how we can then mitigate any risks," he told MPs.

"Operation Yellowhammer assumptions are not a prediction of what is likely to happen, they are not a best-case scenario or a list of probable outcomes they are projections of what may happen in a worst-case scenario."

He warned the public and businesses not be "blithe or blase" about a no-deal Brexit but insisted that "risks can be mitigated".

A government source refused to comment on the delay, saying: “The government regularly publishes documents relating to Brexit, and will continue to do so as and when appropriate.”

No 10 disputed there had been a commitment to publish the document and insisted that MPs would be updated regularly on no-deal preparations.