NICOLA Sturgeon has said the UK Government’s refusal to publish its impact assessment of Brexit on Scotland is “unconscionable”.
The First Minister insisted the public had a “right to know” how leaving the EU would affect all areas of the UK and accused Downing Street of a “lack of willingness” to share information.
Speaking at a meeting of Holyrood’s Conveners’ Group, Ms Sturgeon referred to analysis by the London School of Economics that suggested a hard no-deal Brexit could cost Scotland’s economy nearly £30 billion over five years.
Calling for more transparency from Whitehall, she said: “There’s a suggestion that the UK Government has an analysis looking particularly at Scotland as a whole but, thus far, there’s been a refusal to publish those analyses.
“That’s unconscionable. The public have a right to know."
David Mundell told MPs on Tuesday that there was Scotland-specific analysis on Brexit and that this would be shared with the Scottish Government, which had carried out its own research. He said he did not recognise the LSE figures, which he branded “provocative”.
But during Scottish Questions in the Commons yesterday, the Scottish Secretary, made clear nothing would be published, which was deemed detrimental to the UK’s case in the Brussels talks.
His open admission of Scotland-specific analysis contradicted an earlier response from Whitehall to a Freedom of Information request, in which officials said they could neither confirm nor deny such analysis existed as it might harm the UK’s negotiating position in the Brexit talks.
Asked if the UK Government was worried that, by sharing the analysis with the SNP administration in Edinburgh, details of it could be leaked, a senior source noted: “If they leaked anything, we wouldn’t share anything more with them on Brexit.”
Meanwhile, during a debate on EU withdrawal at Holyrood, Michael Russell, the Scottish Government minister, insisted a no-deal Brexit must not be allowed to happen as it would be “catastrophic” for Scotland’s economy.
Adam Tomkins for the Scottish Conservatives argued that no deal was “absolutely not the UK Government’s preferred outcome”, rather, it wanted a bold, ambitious and comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU27.
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