Government failing to engage properly on Brexit, Lords claim

The House of Lords' Brexit Committee has written to David Davis complaining about the poor "standard of engagement" from across government departments, including his own.

Ahead of the Brexit secretary's next appearance on 1 May, Lord Boswell of Aynho, chairman of the European Union Committee, urged Davis to take steps "to encourage an improvement of performance across government, and to ensure that examples of best practice are learned from and applied more widely".

The letter details numerous examples where engagement was not up to scratch, potentially harming the amount of scrutiny that can be carried out. Departments in the firing line include the Home Office, the Treasury, Ministry of Justice, DCMS and DexEU.

Davis himself has been taken to task for failing to respond in appropriately to a complaint about a lack of response to a letter sent some months previously.

"The problems rehearsed in this letter illustrate what appears to be a general decline across a number of government departments in the standard of engagement with the scrutiny process and with scrutiny committees. Your own department is not immune from this decline," today's letter states.

Davis has been asked to respond ahead of his appearance. Separately home secretary Amber Rudd has been asked to appear before the committee "to explain her departments behaviour".

Yesterday the Lords flexed its muscles by backing an amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill over remaining in a customs union, forcing the debate back to the Commons, which had approved the bill some months ago.

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CityAM

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