Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to Operation Yellowhammer, what his Department's base case planning assumptions were before that document was published.

Yellowhammer has always considered the reasonable worst case scenario and never a ‘base’ or ‘central’ scenario. This was confirmed in the NAO report, published in March 2019, which said that in Operation Yellowhammer “Departments are working on the basis of a reasonable worst case scenario.” Some iterations of the Reasonable worst case scenario planning assumptions have used the words ‘base scenario’ as a subtitle for the contextual assumptions, outlining the background to a no-deal brexit.

Yellowhammer reasonable worst case planning assumptions are kept under review and updated planning assumptions for exiting the European Union without a deal will be published in due course.