Just days after analysis showed that the only places in Scotland to vote for Brexit were fishing towns, a new leaked document claims the UK Government don’t regard the industry as high priority in EU talks.
In the memo seen by the Times, the Tories have divided British industries into high, medium and low priority. Fishing will be set at “medium priority” along with North Sea oil and gas.
The SNP called it a “betrayal”.
High priorities for Theresa May are banking, pharmaceuticals, car making, textiles and clothing, aerospace and air transport. Low priorities include steel and the business services sector. The list appeared in a document prepared by officials and circulated in November.
A government spokesman said: “We do not comment on partial accounts of leaked documents... We have been doing detailed work to prepare for the negotiation, analysing more than 50 sectors and cross-cutting issues.”
According to reports, the Treasury believe the memo is proof of the Prime Minister’s increasingly interventionist, approach, “with the sector-specific approach coming too close to a regime that requires picking winners.”
There is also real fear among many business people, who say the recent stooshie after a memo compiled by Deloitte, the accountancy firm, detailing Brexit problems was leaked.
Bosses at the firm had to promise not to bid for government contracts for six months after the row.
Last year the CBI produced a major report on the Brexit challenges facing several sectors, which avoided any prioritisation of one over another.
“This list will act as an urgent wake-up call for businesses. Those industries deemed ‘lower priority’ may not agree with the Government’s assessment they will have an ‘easier’ Brexit,” one business source told the paper.
A senior figure in the telecoms industry said that while they were not surprised to be lower down the priority list than financial services, they were worried that this might mean that insufficient attention was paid to the sector. “We as an industry were not invited in by government to discuss Brexit challenges until the end of January when we were asked to see Matt Hancock [Culture Minister with responsibility for digital policy]. Yet there are huge challenges surrounding data flows, regulatory regimes and collaborative technology thrown-up by Brexit.”
The SNP’s Energy spokesperson Callum McCaig MP called the Government’s priorities “appalling”.
“To give the oil and gas sector a low priority is a real betrayal.
“There is no need to prioritise some industries over others – last year the CBI produced a major report on the Brexit challenges facing several sectors which avoided any prioritisation of one over another.
“And staying in the single market would avoid the need for this damaging sector by sector approach.”
Earlier this week, analysis by the BBC suggested voters in fishing communities backed Brexit over Remain. A cluster of six wards in north Aberdeenshire had a Leave majority of 61 per cent, and Whalsay and South Unst in Shetland had a Leave vote of 81 per cent.
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