Boris Johnson's government has already spent £4.4bn on Brexit preparations, new figures reveal

Boris Johnson’s government has been accused of “keeping the public in the dark” over the true cost of Brexit, as new figures show that Whitehall departments have spent at least £4.4bn on preparations for withdrawal from the EU. And there were warnings that the figure will only increase as the prospect looms of new border checks and controls at the end of the transition period in December. The National Audit Office study found that more than 22,000 civil servants across 18 government departments were working on Brexit preparations by the end of last year, with the task consuming 12 per cent of all senior mandarins and 5 per cent of the total workforce. If the staff working on Brexit had been...