David Cameron’s government committed an act of gross negligence and deepened the uncertainty surrounding the impact of Brexit by instructing Whitehall not to make any contingency plans for a vote to leave the EU, parliament’s foreign affairs select committee has said.



The former Cabinet Office minister, Oliver Letwin, told the committee that no plans for Brexit were ordered because it was possible they would leak and then be seen as unwarranted interference in the referendum campaign.

The committee’s report says Cameron’s “considered view not to instruct key departments including the Foreign Office (FCO) to plan for the possibility that the electorate would vote to leave the EU amounted to gross negligence”.

“It has exacerbated post-referendum uncertainty both within the UK and amongst key international partners, and made the task now facing the new government substantially more difficult,” the report adds.



The select committee also said that Brexit means the FCO will need extra resources and personnel, and a clear understanding with the other new Whitehall departments about responsibilities on the Brexit process.

It warned against a raid on Foreign Office staff by the new departments set up to deal with Brexit. Pointing out that the entire annual FCO budget “is only twice the sum spent every year on aid to Ethiopia alone”, the report says the FCO needs a substantial increase in resources.



“Any raid on Whitehall personnel by the new Department for Exiting the European Union,” the committee’s report says, “is likely to include a particularly large proportion of officials from the FCO, including from its Europe directorate and from UKRep in Brussels.”

The report adds that the former foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, had warned last year the FCO is already “pretty close to the irreducible minimum of UK-based staff on the network”.

It says: “While it is essential that the Whitehall officials with relevant expertise are identified and put at the centre of managing the exit process, this cannot come at the expense of an already-overstretched FCO.”

Ministers are understood to be bidding for extra staff in key embassies outside the EU, claiming that the Treasury’s decision to drop the aim of a budget surplus by the end of the parliament has signalled a relaxation of the purse strings.

The report says: “This is also about the UK’s international reputation. We want to see the Foreign Office working effectively with the new Department for International Trade and the Department for Exiting the European Union. Our security, prosperity, values and democracy will depend on the strength of these key departments and their working relationships.”

In a sign that relationships in Whitehall have not yet bedded down, George Bridges, a junior minister at the Department for Exiting the EU, was forced to return to the Lords to explain why he had not told peers that the government was planning to abandon its planned presidency of the EU. The announcement was made by Downing Street in the evening on Tuesday, only hours after Lord Bridges assured peers no such decision was imminent.

Faced by warnings that peers would lose trust in him if he continued to be cavalier and failed to be open with parliament, Bridges refused to say when he had been informed of the Downing Street decision.

He said abandoning the presidency scheduled for the second half of 2017 would save the UK anywhere between €35m (£29m) and €170m.