Brexit minister condemned by union for questioning civil servants' impartiality

14.31:  Two witnesses have now come forward to back up Charles Grant’s version of what he said about Treasury civil servants at the event attended by the Brexit minister Steve Baker. (

And this is from the Conservative MP Antoinette Sandbach.

I was at the #Prospect lunch at which @CER_Grant is alleged to have made these comments as was a member of my staff. At NO point did I hear any suggestion of civil servants deliberately manipulating data modelling.

13.31: The Centre for European Reform has now issued its statement about what its director, Charles Grant, was alleged to have said about Treasury officials. It echoes what Grant himself said earlier about how he had not claimed that officials were rigging the forecasts and how the Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg had misrepresented what he had said.

12.36: Charles Grant has just told me that he does recall having a conversation with the Brexit minister Steve Baker about Treasury Brexit modelling, but that he did not say the Treasury was fixing the results. (See 12.25pm and 12.33pm.) Grant said:

I recall staying to Steve Baker at a Prospect lunch at the Conservative conference that I was aware of research the Treasury had done. This apparently showed that the economic benefits of the UK forging FTA’s (free trade agreements) with third countries outside the EU were significantly less than the economic costs of the leaving the customs union. (I may have said customs union and single market).

12.33: Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, has just posted a message on Twitter saying his words were misrepresented by Jacob Rees-Mogg in the Commons earlier.

Let my clarify. What Rees-Mogg said I said is partially true, partially untrue. I never said Treasury officials had deliberately constructed models to show all futures outside the customs union were bad, with the intent of influencing policy. @CER_EU will put out press rel soon.

12.25: Steve Baker, a Brexit minister, refused to dismiss a claim that civil servants were rigging their Brexit analyses to show that the UK should stay in the customs union. The claim was made by the Tory Brexiter Jacob Rees-Mogg. He asked Baker if he had heard the claim from Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, that “officials in the Treasury have deliberately developed a model to show that all options other than staying in the customs union were bad and that officials intended to use this to influence policy”. 

Rees-Mogg went on:

If this is correct, does he share my view that it goes against the spirit of the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms that underpin our independent civil service?

Baker replied: “I am sorry to say that my honourable friend’s account is essentially correct.” But then he made it clear that he was saying it was correct that Grant had made this claim, not that he was saying the claim was necessary true. But Baker did not dismiss the claim either. He told MPs:

At the time I considered it implausible because my direct experience is that civil servants are extraordinarily careful to uphold the impartiality of the civil service. I think we must proceed with great caution in this matter but I heard [Grant] raise this issue. I think we need to be very careful not to take this forward in an inappropriate way. But he has reminded me of something which I heard. I think it would be quite extraordinary if it turned out that such a thing had happened.

The Centre for European Reform is due to put out a response soon.

(It may well be that Rees-Mogg has misunderstood Grant, and that Grant was simply saying Treasury officials thought their models would show that staying in the customs unions was the best option, not that they had been rigged to produce this outcome.)