What was Operation Yellowhammer?
Operation Yellowhammer was the government’s contingency planning for its response to the most severe anticipated short-term disruption under a no-deal Brexit. This was under a ‘reasonable worst case’ scenario.
The name was an interesting choice because the yellowhammer is a bird whose song has a rhythm like “a little bit of bread and no cheese”. It lays three to five eggs whose shells have a mesh of fine dark lines, which gave rise to the bird’s old name of “scribble lark”.
The government published its planning assumptions to Parliament in September 2019. In August 2020, there was a leak of a Cabinet Office EU Transition Task Force update which took into account Covid-19. Reasonable worst-case planning assumptions are used as the basis to prepare plans. If plans were in place, the government believed it could expect a reasonable level of preparedness for most of the risks.
At the heart of the planning effort was the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, with its own communications hub to support ministers on emergency responses. The CSS coordinated contingency planning under 12 risk areas and three cross-cutting work areas. Government departments undertook contingency planning for their areas of responsibility (see Table 15.3).
People involved
The number of people involved underlines the scale and complexity of the issues they faced.
- By February 2019, more than 16,000 civil servants were working on Brexit. 1,500 were moved on to contingency planning for ‘no deal’ (i.e.Yellowhammer) prior to 29 March 2019.
- Afterwards, many were stood down. Some were then stood up again for a possible ‘no deal’ on 31 October, only to be stood down again on 28 October (this included stopping the government’s advertising campaign to get ready for Brexit).
- Although no-deal planning continued it was not clear how many civil servants were involved in 2020.
- For the wider Brexit effort in 2019:
- Over 14,000 civil servants were working across six departments: BEIS, DCMS, DEFRA, DIT, HMRC and the Home Office.
- About 2,000 were working across the Cabinet Office, DExEU, DfT, DHSC, FCO and MHCLG
Coordinating the response of all the bodies involved under a no-deal scenario would have been a significant task. Should the Yellowhammer plans have become operational they could have involved:
- More than 30 central government bodies, including almost all central government departments;
- 42 local resilience forums in England and Wales, and equivalent bodies in Scotland and Northern Ireland, which in turn would coordinate the work of local bodies, including police and local authorities;
- Scottish and Welsh governments;
- Northern Ireland Civil Service;
- Crown Dependencies, Overseas Territories (including Gibraltar) and Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus; and
- Sectors and industries which would have been impacted (including their regulatory bodies)
Sources: Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Wikipedia
Yellowhammer risk areas
| Table 15.3: Yellowhammer risk areas | ||
|---|---|---|
| Ref | Area of risk | Lead |
| 1 | Transport systems | DfT |
| 2 | People crossing borders | BDG |
| 3 | Key goods crossing borders | BDG |
| 4 | Healthcare services | DHSC |
| 5 | UK energy and other critical industries | BEIS |
| 6 | UK food and water supplies | DEFRA |
| 7 | UK nationals in the EU | FCO |
| 8 | Law enforcement implications | Home Office |
| 9 | Banking and finance industry services | HMT |
| 10 | Northern Ireland | NIO |
| 11 | Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies | FCO |
| 12 | National security | NSS |
| Cross-cutting areas of work (i.e. across all 12 risk areas) | ||
| Data | DCMS | |
| Legal | Cabinet Office – legal | |
| Communications | Cabinet Office and DExEU – communications | |
| Scroll down to the page for departmental abbreviations. | ||
Sources:
NAO, Contingency preparations for exiting the EU with no deal, 12 March 2019
Letter from Cabinet Office to Chair of Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, 28 March 2019
House of Commons Library, Brexit: contingency planning and powers, March 2019
Government planning assumptions
The government decided not to publish it in full after ministers took the view that the findings would alarm the public. Instead, the government published a short six-page paper dated 2 August 2019, which provided its planning assumptions for ‘no deal’. The government also said it was updating its assumptions (which was a continuous process).
Comment: Given the amount of work that has gone into Yellowhammer, it’s clear that the six-pager was only the tip of the iceberg. For example, in February 2019, there was a leak of the DfT’s Yellowhammer document: the summary for transport of the risks and mitigating actions. This tip of another iceberg had 37 pages. Sky reported at the time that the DfT paper noted:
“Operation is potentially enormous”…“Impacts … could grow exponentially as issues impact upon each other and capabilities of responders at all levels decrease or become overwhelmed”
In August 2020, the Cabinet Office’s EU Transition Task Force presented updated assumptions to ministers to kick off refreshed planning for ‘no deal’. The document was leaked and was not in the public domain, so what follows below was based on the Sun’s exclusive report about it.
The overarching assumptions probably remained broadly the same as 2019, with the exceptions of the addition of Covid-19 and that the border in Ireland should be covered by the Withdrawal Agreement. Nevertheless, the Task Force warned that overall:
“pandemic influenza, severe flooding, a Covid second wave and an unruly exit from the EU transition period could cause a systemic economic crisis with major impact on disposable incomes, unemployment, business activity, international trade and market stability.”
Covid-19 assumptions
There were some updated planning assumptions in 2020 as a result of Covid-19. These included:
- Traffic flow between Dover and Calais could go down 45 per cent, triggering long queues of HGVs in Kent.
- France will force “mandatory controls on UK goods from day one” and between 40 and 70 per cent of hauliers travelling across the Channel may not be ready for this.
- Could lead to shortages of the 30 per cent of food imported from EU as well as medicines, chemicals for drinking water purification and fuel supply.
- Focus on Covid-19 has led to a slump in animal vaccine production. If borders are jammed, stockpiles could shrink, risking disease among livestock.
- Food supply across the country would be hit by panic buying at Christmas, the busiest time of year.
- Risk of water rationing and even power cuts.
- NHS could be overwhelmed.
- A further 24-months of virus infections in care homes.
- Mental health crisis that will hit the poorest hardest.
- Inflation could “significantly impact social care providers due to increasing staff and supply costs”.
- Five per cent of councils in England “are already at high risk of financial failure following Covid-19”. Some town halls may go bust and need bailing out or may need to be under direct control of Whitehall.
- Fears of public disorder and coordinated industrial action as a result of shortages and a major economic slump.
- Troops may have to help the police in the worst-case scenario – 1,500 are already on standby.
- Gibraltar could be cut off from Spain and crippled economically.
- Channel Islands may need airdrops of medicines and food.
Source:
The Sun, Disaster Dossier – Leaked document reveals Cabinet’s emergency plans for perfect storm of No Deal Brexit and coronavirus second wave, Harry Cole, 22 August 2020
Overarching assumptions
The August 2019 Yellowhammer paper described the government’s overarching assumptions:
- UK reverts fully to ‘third country’ status (i.e. non-EU and non-EFTA)
- Relationship between UK and EU and individual members states is unsympathetic
- No bilateral deals in place with EU or member states to manage impact (except for social security coordination with Ireland)
- Public and business remain very unprepared as there is no clear decision on the form of EU Exit
- For businesses:
- Larger businesses are better prepared than SMEs
- Brexit extension means some businesses are less prepared than in March due to ‘Brexit fatigue’ and the seasonal impacts
- Seasonal factors in the autumn/winter will compound impacts (e.g. warehouse availability, severe weather, flooding, flu etc.)
Five further general points to note (numbers in brackets refer to paragraphs in the Yellowhammer document):
- Impact of no-deal Brexit on the EU will be small (2)
- Several assumptions about borders and likely transport delays, in particular in relation to the Dover-Calais bottleneck, and the implications for supply chains, food and medicines (1,3,6,7,14,18)
- Disruption to data flows (both personal and business), including for security and law enforcement (9,10)
- No assumptions about the impact on services trade apart from: ‘some cross-border financial services may be disrupted’ (8) and ‘a small minority of payments from UK insurers into the EU may be delayed’ (16)
- Low income groups will be disproportionately affected by any price rises in food and fuel (17)
Detailed implications
- Borders and transport
- Three months of disruption at Channel crossings (2)
- Two-and-a-half day delays for lorries entering the UK (2)
- Immigration delays for UK tourists heading to Europe (3)
- Food (7)
- Reduced availability of fresh food
- Supermarket price rises
- Panic-buying
- Medicine (6)
- ‘Severe extended delays’ to medicine supplies
- Supply chains for medicines and medical products are “particularly vulnerable” to disruption at the Channel ports
- While some products can be stockpiled, others cannot because they have a short shelf life
- Impractical to stockpile products to cover expected delays of up to six months
- Social care (20)
- An increase in inflation would “significantly impact” adult social care providers and may lead to some failing, with smaller providers impacted within two to three months.
- Energy and water
- Disruption to fuel supplies (5)
- ‘Significant’ electricity price rises (5)
- Lack of clean water due to failure in supply of chemicals (7)
- Breakdown in sharing of law enforcement data with EU countries (10)
- Disruption to personal data flows from the EU (9)
- Fishing wars between UK and EU vessels (19)
- Gibraltar not prepared enough (12)
- Rise in protests and public disorder (13)
There would also be disruption in Northern Ireland and to trade between Great Britain and NI. As a result of the Withdrawal Agreement, the impacts would now be different to what Yellowhammer expected in 2019 (18).