The government's lawyers advising on Brexit are "out of their depth" and must be bolstered with external specialists as a matter of urgency, the chair of the influential justice select committee has said.
Conservative MP Bob Neill, who also sits on the APPG for wholesale financial markets and services, said while ministers "have the will to get a settlement" he feared that a satisfactory deal for the City could not be agreed in time, based on the current legal resources.
"The issues around the legal aspects of financial services regulation are so technical, I think frankly government lawyers are out of their depth," he told City A.M. "The engagement with people at ministerial, particularly people like [solicitor general] Robert Buckland, has been very positive. But the approach is still not joined up enough - is it being led by the MoJ, the Law Officers, Dexeu or Treasury?
"When you get down to the official level, I don't think in-house lawyers have expertise or experience, or frankly the capacity in terms of numbers to give me confidence that they will be able to get a real grip on the technicalities of this."
Neill's comments come amid a growing debate around the extent of government's reliance on external companies, with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn claiming the "costly" relationship should be ended on the back of the Carillion collapse. "These companies should be shown the door," he said during today's PMQs.
But Neill echoed Tory colleague Bernard Jenkin's comments earlier this week that the relationship should be "more symbiotic", rather than less. He pointed to examples in other countries, particularly Germany, where it is less critically regarded by the public as a whole and encourages "responsible capitalism".
Neill claimed there was a cultural issue at the heart of the problem, blaming civil servants for seeing their role as "a bit of a priesthood, and only they have the means to give objective advice. Culturally they are very reluctant to take advice," he explained.
Although that culture has existed for successive governments it has been "exposed by Brexit," Neill added.
"They dress it up as all manner of things - about conflicts of interest - but it’s a certain jealousy of access and control of information to ministers," he said.
A DexEU spokesperson said: "We are drawing on the skills of the brightest and best people in the civil service to ensure we have the right expertise to deal with all aspects of our preparation to leave the EU, and that includes our lawyers.
"We are also drawing on the advice of external specialists and will continue to bring in expertise from outside as necessary."
