Asked by: Lord Redwood (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Exiting the European Union :
To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, what recent assessment the Government has made of the UK's level of preparedness in the event that the UK leaves the EU without a deal on 31 October 2019.
Answered by James Cleverly - Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government
Leaving the EU with a deal remains our priority, but as a responsible Government we've been preparing for nearly three years to minimise disruption in the event of no deal.
We have over 300 work streams looking at specific no deal plans across a range of sectors and these are well advanced. There is still some work to be done but departments are making sensible decisions about prioritisation.
Departments report progress delivering each workstream on a regular basis. DExEU aggregates the cross-Government picture of readiness and provides regular updates to Ministers. This allows for the swift resolution of barriers to improve the Government’s overall preparedness for exit.
As you might expect, these aggregate assessments of Government preparedness are exceptionally sensitive. If our overall assessment - or the underlying data - were made public, both our negotiating position and our ability to manage delivery across the programme would be significantly damaged.