The_Guardian_-_2016-12-29

Penman said the government may have to drop some of its priorities or increase the resources given
to the civil service.
He pointed out that only two ministries – Liam Fox’s international trade department and the Foreign
Office – had been given extra resources, while others were dealing with Brexit, a cuts programme
and trying to implement a domestic agenda at the same time.
“To some degree civil servants are used to this process – government has for many years been about
giving the civil service less money, not more. But what is unique this time is the scale, the complexity
and the politics of it all,” he said.
The Home Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs were facing a
particularly difficult time this coming year, he said. About 1,200 EU laws, one-quarter of the total,
relate to Defra, which distributes £3bn of EU money to farmers, and oversees fishing quotas and
water quality.
“Defra is going to be 35%-40% smaller in 2019 than it was in 2010. Its ability to cope with
supporting the government’s negotiations around key policy areas for it, plus dealing with what day
one outside of the EU looks like, is an enormous challenge. Andrea Leadsom [the environment
secretary] is going to have to make some choices,” he said.
Departments were bracing themselves for ministerial initiatives that would be increasingly difficult to
implement because Brexit would require so much of the staff’s time and resources, he said.
Some staff within the Home Office were shocked when the home secretary, Amber Rudd, told the
Conservative party conference in September that she would force firms to identify their foreign
workers.
Home secretary Amber Rudd targets immigration and foreign workers
Penman said the plan had prompted some anxiety among officials because it would have taken dozens
of staff away from Brexit planning for many months to make such a scheme work properly.
“When they dreamed up this idea of setting up a register of EU nationals, there was panic in the Home
Office because the civil servants understood the complexity and the time and resource required to do
something like that,” he said.
Ministers would in time be forced to drop some non-Brexit initiatives, Penman predicted. “Either
Brexit is not going to be funded and resourced or the PM is going to have to drop something.
Something is going to have to give, and it is not going to be Brexit.
“Brexit dominates everything right now – the politics and the civil service and everyone is focused on
the great repeal bill and article 50. All the government is doing right now is preparing the ground for
the negotiating process.
“The civil service will have to effectively run a Formula One car whilst building next year’s car at