BREXIT is getting in the way of government, according to the leader of the senior civil servants union.
Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA, said Theresa May’s unwillingness to accept that leaving the EU might be difficult is taking the civil service to breaking point.
Speaking to The Guardian, Penman said anyone suggesting Brexit might not be a walk in the park ends up “accused of betraying the will of the people”.
“It is pure politics that is defining the Brexit debate and forcing May to say this is not a big, difficult job, and it is all in hand. Ministers lack the political courage to admit how complex and time-consuming this will be.
“When anyone pops their head above the parapet – former permanent secretaries, ex-cabinet secretaries, the Institute for Government – and says this is going to take a long time and it’s complex, they are immediately shot down and accused of betraying the will of the people.
“The politics around Brexit are the biggest risk to Brexit.”
Despite the mammoth task facing the government as it prepares to trigger Article 50 and start the process of Brexit, there has been little extra support given to the civil servants who will be doing most of the detailed work.
Penman warned that unless extra resources were given, other departments will suffer.
“The civil service is either going to have to be given more resources to deal with Brexit and its usual work or it will have to change its priorities. And government doesn’t want to admit to either,” he said.
“Ministers don’t want to admit that this work and the choices are complex because it doesn’t play well politically and they don’t want to make hard choices around priorities. But something has got to give.”
He added: “Either Brexit is not going to be funded and resourced or the PM is going to have to drop something. Something is going to have to give, and it is not going to be Brexit.”
Meanwhile, Michael Gove, the champion Brexiteer and failed Tory leadership contender had BBC Radio 4 listeners choking on their coco-pops yesterday morning when he urged people to interrogate the claims of experts and ask to see their evidence.
Gove spent much of the Brexit campaign in a bus branded with the claim leaving the EU would deliver £350 million a week for the NHS.
Speaking on the Today programme, Gove said: “Instead of taking what experts say at face value we should always interrogate their claims and ask to see the evidence.
“The great intellectual gains of the Reformation and the Enlightenment came when we stopped believing that only an elite could understand and interpret the decisions governing all our lives.”
Shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth tweeted: “Michael Gove telling us to always ask for evidence. Perhaps he can give us the evidence for his £350 million a week for NHS.”
One Twitter user, uglygame, said: “Michael Gove lecturing others on the need for intellectual honesty is the perfect summation of 2016.”
Ian Bond of the pro-EU Centre for European Reform think tank said: “Why is Michael Gove allowed to say experts should show their evidence & then to claim with no evidence that NHS will get £350m a week?”
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