Question to the Northern Ireland Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, what estimate she has made of the additional staff required by her Department in the event that the UK leaves the EU (a) with and (b) without a deal.

EU exit affects a number of work areas across the Department and will therefore encompass a proportion of workload for many staff, the amount of which will vary over time. The Department has restructured its approach to the way it handles EU exit work, moving from an initial central EU exit co-ordinating team of 7 to the current position where EU exit work is distributed widely across the whole department. Many of the same staff spend a proportion of their time preparing for leaving the EU (a) with and (b) without a deal. Those proportions vary continuously over time. As such it is difficult to quantify the number of staff working on preparing for the UK to leave the EU under any one possible scenario.