Brexit: Government 'paranoia' over secret business agreements
https://news.sky.com/story/brexit-government-paranoia-over-secret-business-agreements-11290344
Sky News has established the Government has been signing a series of secret agreements with companies and industry groups over highly controversial outcomes of the Brexit process for Britain's trade border.
The attempt to enforce silence about outside discussions on the changes urgently required to the border after Brexit has raised eyebrows across industry.
A series of non-disclosure agreements have been forced into the process of consultation with the logistics companies that actually operate the UK border, with one industry source calculating that "many dozens" have been signed.
The development was described by Meg Hillier MP, the chair of the Public Accounts Committee, as "extremely unusual" and "a sign of Government paranoia".
Reports based on anonymised data from this exercise, calculating likely difficulties and delays caused by border checks, have been fed back into the Border Planning Group, a cross Whitehall committee of senior officials.
But in recent weeks the requirement to sign non-disclosure agreements has also spread to more arcane technical committees on the future of the border.
Some have refused to sign them, citing concern about Brexit secrecy curtailing political debate about the economic consequences of the Government's red lines and suggesting the "bizarre, Secret Society" agreements were preventing trade bodies from discussing their Brexit approach internally.