THE Department for Exiting the EU will now no longer be in charge of exiting the EU.

Theresa May announced the change yesterday, saying she would now be taking the lead when it came to Brexit.

The SNP accused her of yet another power grab.

The change, announced in a written statement, means new Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab will not have the same role as his predecessor David Davis, with the position being relegated to “deputising” for the Prime Minister in Brussels talks.

May said the Europe Unit led by Olly Robbins in the Cabinet Office, which reports directly to No 10, will have “overall responsibility for the preparation and conduct of the negotiations”.

The SNP’s foreign affairs spokesman Stephen Gethins said there was an irony in the announcement: “Just days after his promotion, Dominic Raab has had his responsibilities stripped back and his department gutted of any meaningful power. It is ironic that the department which has been repeatedly accused of attempting a power grab has itself fallen victim to a power grab.”

Labour’s shadow Brexit minister Jenny Chapman said Raab had been “sidelined by the Prime Minister before he has even had the chance to get his feet under the table”.

But Raab insisted he hadn’t been demoted, and that May had always been in overall charge. The announcement, he insisted, was nothing more than “shifting of the Whitehall deckchairs”.

It came as the Government published details of the legislation it plans to use to implement the Withdrawal Agreement taking the UK out of the EU in just 218 days.

The 38-page White Paper covers the rights of EU citizens in the UK and British citizens living in Europe, as well as the financial settlement and the details of a transition period expected to end in December 2020.

The bill can only brought forward once the UK and the EU have agreed a deal and Parliament has approved.

Raab described it as “another key milestone in the UK’s path to leaving the EU”.

He repeated his warning that the UK could withhold payment of its £39 billion “divorce bill” if the EU fails to reach agreement on its future trade relationship with the UK.

Appearing before MPs on the Exiting the European Union Committee, Raab was repeatedly challenged about planning for a no deal.

He declined to “drip-feed out” details of the planning but said a series of technical notices which will, “in a responsible and reassuring way, explain what [the Government is] doing to mitigate the risks”.

Asked to confirm reports the Government is stockpiling food, he said: “It would be wrong to describe it as the Government doing the stockpiling ... we will look at this issue in the round and make sure there’s adequate food supplies.”