The Exiting the EU Select Committee has released the government's sectoral analyses. You can read all 39 (HERE). Considering these were so secret that MPs were firstly prevented from seeing them at all, then, when parliament forced their release, an appointment had to be made to see a single paper copy under supervision in a locked room, they are remarkably anodyne.
Reuter's take on it is HERE. Bloomberg (HERE) have an embarrassingly humorous report on it with the headline "UK's Secret Brexit Studies Reveal That Airbus Makes Planes" saying the details:
"went on to reveal that there are two companies in the world that make large passenger aircraft. Now that the documents are public, these firms can be named as Boeing Co.and Airbus SE". Who knew?
Looking at the Automotive Sector analysis (HERE) this is just as bad:
All major global vehicle manufacturers with plants in the UK are foreign owned. In general, the business model for volume vehicle producers is to use UK sites to supply the European market (with alternative sites in Asia and the Americas supplying those markets). Really?
Paragraph 56 says:
The EU Member States, the Commission and the UN Governments, strive to ensure harmonisation is maintained between the EU and UN-ECE with the EU adopting the safety regulations developed in the UN-ECE while the environmental standards of the EU are adopted into UN-ECE regulations. There are no harmonised international standards for a limit on car or van CO2 emissions.
So, we comply with UNECE standards but in automotive environmental matters these are actually EU standards in any case. We are apparently happy to comply with EU standards provided they come via the UN!
And paragraph 58:
The UK is well respected in the UN groups and experience over recent years shows that the UK can be influential/instrumental in creating the compromise situations that build consensus whilst delivering UK policy objectives. This plays well to UK interests as vehicle manufacturers favour UN approvals over EU as they provide access to many more markets than an EU approval. The EU is required to accept, as an alternative to an EU regulation, a vehicle that has demonstrated compliance with an equivalent UN-ECE Regulation to which the EU is a Contracting Party.
Note, we want to leave the EU, with 27 friendly member states because they "force" us to obey their stupid regulations but seem to think the 160 countries, including Russia, Argentina and Iran, countries that are not natural allies of the UK, will be more disposed to listen to us as we bend the rules in our favour. This is wishful thinking of a very high order.
It is all absolutely shaming. We are becoming an international laughing stock.
