DAVID Davis has been called on to resign after he admitted that the UK Government had produced no impact assessments on the effect of Brexit on different sectors of the UK economy.
Hauled before the Commons Exiting the EU Committee to explain his failure to hand over 58 sectoral assessments as required by Westminster, the Brexit Secretary explained that no such documents had been produced as their usefulness was thought to be "near zero".
He told MPs that Brexit would provoke a "paradigm change" in the UK economy on a similar order of magnitude to the financial crash of 2008, making economic forecast models unlikely to be "informative".
Mr Davis pointed out that as early as last December his department had been "in the midst of carrying out about 57 sets of analyses" on different parts of the economy.
In June he told a TV interview how nearly 60 sector analyses had been completed and in October he told the Brexit committee Theresa May had read "summary outcomes" of impact assessments, which he said went into "excruciating detail".
His admission that no assessments existed was branded a "dereliction of duty" by Labour committee member Seema Malhotra while Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas said: "This is beyond farcical. Davis is either grossly incompetent or someone who struggles with the truth and treats MPs with contempt. Either way, he should be out of his job."
Tim Farron, the former Liberal Democrat leader, demanded "Dexit,” which he described as the “exit from the duplicity and dither of David Davis". The Cumbrian MP called for the removal of a minister, who, he claimed, had "misled Parliament and...turned incompetence into an art form".
Meanwhile, the SNP's Pete Wishart approached John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, to ask whether or not contempt proceedings could be triggered.
But the committee last night said: “In view of the statement that no impact assessments have been undertaken, the Committee considers the Government’s response to the resolution of the House of November 1 has complied with the terms of that resolution.”
After the Commons passed a Labour motion, unopposed by the Government, last month demanding that Mr Davis hand the 58 impact assessments over to the committee, the Brexit Secretary insisted that the documents did not exist in that form and it would take time to compile the information gathered by departments across Whitehall.
Meanwhile, appearing before the Commons Treasury Committee, Philip Hammond said his own department had "modelled and analysed a whole range of potential alternative structures" but the Chancellor stressed that placing them in the public domain would be "deeply unhelpful to the negotiation".
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