Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[garbon]

How does this square with then desire to collect endless private data with things like the online harms bill? Feels weird to have privacy rights championed for alleged criminals vs privacy of less importance for citizens viewing legal pornography.

I mean that law's an absolute mess and incredibly illiberal - what worries me about it is that it has support from all the parties.

There's the porn/age-gating issue, but there's also the ability for the (independent) regulator to fine the platforms up to 10% of their global revenue for allowing users to send "genuinely threatening" or "knowingly false" messages or messages that cause "harm" (which can include emotional distress) to people, especially on the basis of protected characteristics. I get the desire to want to deal with online death threats, hate and misinformation but I have a really fundamental objection to the general idea that the state can prosecute people or fine organisations for sending/allowing to be sent "legal but harmful" content to other adults.

The effect won't be lots of prosecutions or police enforcement - though there will be some, the police seem to like prosecuting people for bad tweets presumably because it doesn't involve much work - but the platforms taking a very restrictive/censorious approach in the UK to avoid liability.

Now how all of that sits with a government that bangs on about free speech and wants to push back against "wokeness", I've no idea. Similarly how we have this developing and very robust idea of privacy in relation to what the press can report (developed by the courts and regulators, not really legislation), but as you say the Online Safety Bill is very difficult.

But I really think we need a bit of a genuinely liberal, free speech push back in this country because there's lots of little incremental changes either through the courts or regulators, or just the madness of Online Safety Bill, that I think cumulatively will have an effect. I know that "free speech" is normally a joke because it's normally Piers Morgan storming off his TV show but I think it is an issue and becoming more of a worry. Not least because when we think about those rules around "legal but harmful" speech in the Online Safety Bill it will be interpreted by the same courts and regulators that have massively diminished the weight of public interest in reporting and free speech v harm to an individual's prviacy rights; I have no doubt that they would take the same direction with that law.

In this case for example a journalist could uncover serious wrongdoing about an individual but reporting that on its own could open them to defamation/libel claims. So normally a way that has helped is the defence of truth where they can say x person is under investigation for this. It's now likely unlawful to report that an individual is under investigation.

Yeah it is all very troubling. As you say often less of a true enforcement issue but rather what companies will do to avoid straying into the grey and/or wealthy using as a bludgeon.

I also saw that part of this (and apparently already law in Scotland) is that unsolicited dick pics are/will be illegal as well as get you on a sex offences registrar. I wonder how that works with apps.

[Sheilbh]

I think the Online Safety Bill also creates a new offence of "cyberflashing" to cover that so no doubt that'll come south of the border too.

Just seen another point by a journalist on the challenges of privacy laws for investigative reporters - under this ruling it actually creates really perverse incentives against investigative reporters reporting things to the police when they really should be, for example if there's a safeguarding issue. Because once the police are involved, there's a presumption of an individual's reasonable expectation to privacy.

[Tamas]

Ginormous possible penalties which can be issued based on broad and ill-defined pretexts is exactly how Orban reigned in the Hungarian media after his brute-force attempt failed on EU resistance in 2011.

[Sheilbh]

Ginormous possible penalties which can be issued based on broad and ill-defined pretexts is exactly how Orban reigned in the Hungarian media after his brute-force attempt failed on EU resistance in 2011.

The Online Safety Bill doesn't impact the media - though the regulators who would be in charge of policing it are likely to Ofcom and the ICO, who interact with the media a lot. There's a bit of a regulatory bunfight going on at the minute where regulators both want to avoid responsibility for the platforms but also want to position themselves as "the" digital regulator. It's simliar to the level of fines under GDPR (4% of global revenue) or the potential fines under the EU's proposed Digital Services Act (6% of global revenue) and Digital Markets Act (10% of global revenue) which between then covers some of the same territory.

And I absolutely get that regulating the platforms is a big issue for everyone.

But media companies wouldn't be caught by the Online Safety Bill. It's specifically aimed at platforms - so it's Facebook, Google, Twitter etc. And it doesn't apply to "content of democratic importance" which includes those platforms sharing or being used to share content from news publishers. So again the impact on the media is very low (certainly compared to the court/regulatory direction of travel on privacy).

You can see how, in theory, that all sits together - basically the issue is the publication and sharing of "harmful" content. Media organisations/news publishers have layers of control over what's published - lawyers, editors, press regulation etc - so they don't need to be subject to this. The platforms don't have any of that and anyone can publish anything, so the law is basically making platforms responsible for that content.

I think that's probably why there's been less outcry about it - if it impacted the media we would hear more concerns about it. It doesn't, it impacts people posting on Twitter or forums. Also I think journalists are often on the receiving end of those death threats and online hate, or spend their time fighting misinformation so they are probably just relieved to see something being done about it. I'm just not sure it's right.

Edit: Actually I just checked and there's a duty on the platforms to "protect journalistic content".

[Tamas]

I get that, my point is that whats in the online safety bill seems quite very useful to censor whatever platform which falls under its jurisdiction, as evidenced by the Hungarian example. The same method, BTW, used there on online comment sections. Vague rules and severe fines and possibly even criminal liability meant the near-destruction of anonymus un-premoderated commenting under online articles there.

[Sheilbh]

I get that, my point is that whats in the online safety bill seems quite very useful to censor whatever platform which falls under its jurisdiction, as evidenced by the Hungarian example. The same method, BTW, used there on online comment sections. Vague rules and severe fines and possibly even criminal liability meant the near-destruction of anonymus un-premoderated commenting under online articles there.

Yeah absolutely - I think in the UK news providers are already liable for comments below the line which is why they're all moderated or have been turned off.

But even if it's a perfectly benign lovely government - it will still be in the hands of regulators and courts, who have shown through about 10 years of privacy cases that they do not really give much weight to a "public interest" in free speech or repoorting.

I went to an event with the ICO about their journalism code of practice. And there was someone relatively senior from the ICO there talking about it and getting feedback from privacy specialists, or media lawyers etc. They were talking about the very extensive (draft) guidance on publishing about criminal offences - so not even pre-trial stuff. They talked very vaguely about the fact that of course there is a public interest in news but that needs to be weighed against the individual's interest and rights in a private life. Someone from, I think the BBC, pointed out that victims also have an interest in publication - it's not just a vague "public" interest but often very important to the actual victims of a criminal. The guy from the ICO was really surprised and basically "that's a really good point, we've never thought of that"

And I can get it a bit because if you work for a privacy regulator and your entire working life is protecting people's privacy rights - there's a bit of a "if you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail" angle to it. I'm sure the same would happen to any regulator of online harms. It's why I think parliament needs to step in on privacy rights, but also on this - liability for content "that may reasonably be assumed to cause harm" is insanely broad and will be interpreted by the courts who in this country are not at all friendly to freedom of speech.

[Sheilbh]

Oh separately on population growth - because I knew I'd seen this chart somehwere, reality v projections (basically they are broadly, generally in the right area for about 5-10 years and then really just spitballing ) - I also think the 1955 v 1965 is wild:

[Josquius]

 Interesting graph. I love the way it compares past projections.
Nicely shows how basically the 2000s growth was a return to the 60s projection. Incidentally a projection from the last time things were going well in the country.
Where is it from? Looks official.

Oh. Here is the piece I referred to before about population decline in the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/23/overcrowded-britain-myth-brexit-tories

It doesn't seem too unreasonable to me. Though key factor is last time this happened we had the EEC and commonwealth to easily run to. Now....

[Sheilbh]

How underpopulated those spaces have often been since the arrival of Covid-19. Lockdowns and anxiety about the virus do not fully explain the transformation. Far from having too many people, Britain may be in the early stages of a population decline – and it may last longer than the pandemic.

"May be" is doing a lot of work in that sentence/argument

The government has quietly liberalised quite a lot of immigration rules. Jonathan Portes has written about this:

So it is not the case that the new system represents an unequivocal tightening of immigration controls; rather, it rebalances the system from one which was essentially laissez-faire for Europeans, while quite restrictionist for non-Europeans, to a uniform system that, on paper at least, is expensive but has relatively simple and transparent criteria, and covers up to half the UK labour market. As Alan Manning, the former Chair of the Migration Advisory Committee, put it: 'The UK has gone for reducing aspects of migration bureaucracy - labour market tests, quotas - that are commone elsewhere. One way to see it is that it's got more in the way of tariff barriers than non-tariff barriers.'

Net migration hasn't really changed, it's slightly up. It's just become more non-EU than EU.

In part as I say that's because the government has actually made it easier to get a visa. So work visas for India, Pakistan and the Philippines are up by about 50%, Nigeria's doubled, the US is up 20%, "other nationalisties" have gone up by 70%. They've also relaxed the rules around student visas (including how long they can stay after finishing studying to find work and move to a skilled worker visa) so I think we've seen the number of Indian student visas double, Nigeria and Pakistan are up by about 300%, China's up by 150%, the US has also almost doubled.

Add into that something like 100-150k Hong Kong BNO holders moving to the UK (in a pandemic year - and the criteria may be expanded apparently the government are looking at granting visas to children of BNO holders).

Between them BNOs, the various work-related visas and student visas account for about 90% of UK visa-based immigration, the other 10% is family unification (and asylum/refugees are counted separately). But that 90% has been growing very solidly and is still growing.

Based on what's happening both legally with rules being relaxed and in terms of the numbers of visas being granted I don't see any reason to assume that the UK's going to become "less crowded and less cosmopolitan". Over time the rules might get stricter but on current trends we are going to get more crowded at exactly the same pace we were before Brexit or the pandemic and probably more cosmopolitan - this is another part of why I think we are becoming more like Canada, the US etc in terms of diversity and the politics around it.

[Sheilbh]

From Bloomberg editor-in-chief - I totally agree with the main point here.

I would slightly quibble with whether over the last 30 years this would always have been laughed out of court. It's true that the courts have really developed the idea of "right to a private life" a lot over the last couple of decades largely in the context of cases brought about tabloid-ish reporting (Naomi Campbell throwing her phone at an assistant, the BBC coverage of the Met and Cliff Richards - and I think in calling it "tabloidish" it is worth remembring it was the BBC with helicopters over Cliff Richards mansion, not the Sun or the Star) but there's a reason that, until the 2012 Defamation Act, the UK was the global centre for everyone to bring a libel claim - our courts are quite suspicious of the press and free speech (see also the Twitter joke trial which took three appeals to be overturned). This is just another tool for the rich and powerful to use in our court systems to shut people up. And he's wrong that tabloids can still peep into people's bedrooms but that's just a serious journalist being snobbish

It's why, despite all of the hyperventilating on reforming the Human Rights Act I'm pretty solidly behind the government's line that we need to re-balance the right to privacy v free speech because I think it's become wildly out of kilter in the last couple of decades:

U.K. Judges Are Helping the Next Robert Maxwell
Powerful people under investigation for criminal activity have just been given a path to keep their names out of print.
By John Micklethwait
16 February 2022, 16:03 GMT
John Micklethwait is editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News.

It is always convenient for editors to pontificate about press freedom when they lose court cases. However, the U.K. Supreme Court's decision in Bloomberg LP v. ZXC is something that should frighten every decent journalist in Britain — as well as anybody who cares about justice, the conduct of capitalism or freedom of speech.

In Britain, we are stumbling toward a system in which tabloids can still peek into celebrities' bedrooms but serious journalists cannot report on potential wrongdoing at public companies by powerful people.

The underlying facts of the case that the Supreme Court ruled on today are fairly simple. In 2016, Bloomberg News reported that "ZXC," a senior executive at a then-U.K.-listed company with billions of pounds of revenue, was under criminal investigation. There is no dispute about the truth of our reporting; instead, ZXC claimed that our article was an invasion of his privacy. His company's investors, their customers and the public, in his view, had no right to know about the investigation.

Today the Supreme Court found in ZXC's favor, and that his brush with the law should be kept quiet.

The significance of this judgment for freedom of speech is well hidden amid the 51 pages. A lot of the judgment is arcane, dealing with earlier court decisions and some of it criticizing Bloomberg. For instance, the justices fault our reporters for saying they had seen a letter of request about ZXC from the investigative authorities to a foreign counterpart, rather than saying they actually had a copy. They also question whether we had adequately engaged with the investigative authorities before publishing the material.

I am not going to claim that we at Bloomberg got everything right, and for the record, we have never said that ZXC is guilty of anything. But wade through all the legalese, and the core of today's judgment is devastatingly simple: In the court's view, the privacy of this powerful person needed to be protected — and that trumped any public interest in our publishing the information in the letter of request.

Let's be clear about what privacy means in this case. This was not a story about what most of us might see as ZXC's private life — a picture of his children, his health details, his romantic history. This was reporting on his business activities — and an investigation by the authorities into possible malfeasance at a huge company that could have an effect on many people who invested in it.

It gets worse. If you can't report about potential wrongdoing before any charge is brought, then, once somebody has been charged (and ZXC has not), all the proceedings become sub judice with potential reporting restrictions added.

The courts have now presented the powerful with a path to keep their names out of print for years. And it really is only for them. The compensation in this case was 25,000 pounds (which we have paid), but that is a fraction of the legal costs. This right to privacy is only for those who can afford it; strangely enough, these often tend to be those who have the most to hide.

Somewhere Robert Maxwell is smiling. Imagine the long list of British corporate scandals, from Polly Peck to Arcadia to Libor, that would have gone unreported, or only been summed up at the end. If some British version of Elizabeth Holmes were to appear in Nottinghamshire, with a miraculous method of interpreting blood genetics and sucking in billions of pounds to a British Theranos, it would be far harder for dogged journalists to track her down in the same way that the Wall Street Journal pursued the real Holmes in California, long before her trial.

I have worked in supposedly serious journalism for 30 years. My guess — and it can only be that — is that for most of that time, ZXC's insistence that a criminal investigation into his activities, no matter how innocent, should be hidden from investors would have been laughed out of court. For most of my career, judges have been robust in their idea of what the public interest was, especially when it came to people's business practices and alleged financial crimes. But that was before the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone, the monstrous Cliff Richard intrusion (which is cited in the judgment) and other tabloidish excesses.

Now the wrong journalists are paying the price for that. While many hackers have escaped censure and some proudly appear on TV, babbling on about celebrities they think they know, the more serious press is finding it ever harder to report on businesspeople's potential wrongdoing or misbehavior. In particular, the judgment today pushes the U.K. system much closer to the French or German systems, where the powerful can keep their identities secret pretty much from the moment they are investigated until they are convicted — something that big corporations tend to specialize in delaying. Look at the struggle the Financial Times faced to report what was going on at Wirecard.

This will now become common in the U.K. Thanks to other judgments, London has already become the libel capital of the world, with oligarchs flocking here to silence their critics (and, in the process, enriching a lot of British lawyers). Now they can add privacy to their legal toolbox. Even if a reporter can show Oligarch X has done something questionable, poor, defenseless Oligarch X will be able to say that his business really is none of anybody else's business. His shareholders, lenders and customers may disagree.

All this has been done with very little new legislation being passed. It has simply been justices interpreting old laws in new ways that make it ever harder for investigative journalists to do their jobs, and ever easier for businesspeople to hide what they are doing. That has a plain cost to freedom of speech and to democracy, but also to the economy. One of many reasons the City of London rose above other financial centers in Europe was because its dealings were more transparent. The courts are drawing a curtain around British business. Regardless of whether you sympathize with Bloomberg in this case, we are all much poorer for it.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

I think the former FT editor has also come out and said it's difficult to see how they could have reported on Wirecard following this judgement.

Frankly I wonder what media lawyers are advising their editors about reporting on Johnson and the Met/Johnson's FPN now. I think you've got a stronger public interest case when it's a politician - but is that really much bigger than, say, an oligarch who owns a football club or a senior executive in a listed company?

Edit: And having got to the Supreme Court with unanimous judgements at that level and (I think) at the Court of Appeal - the only way out of this mess is legislation from parliament.

Edit: Actually I'm not so sure on a stronger public interest case for the PM - this guy was a senior executive of a listed company with billions in revenue being investigated for corruption. Bloomberg made an argument basically hoping for some confirmation that there is more public interest in that information (everyone expected them to lose but wanted some helpful obiter). The logic of the court is actually the opposite and I don't really see how this wouldn't apply to a fixed penalty notice against Johnson. I mean publication of him being fined for covid breaches would, ordinarily, cause greater damage as he's the Prime Minister than it would about a private individual

We accept that the status of the claimant as a businessman actively involved in the affairs of a large public company means that the limits of acceptable criticism of him are wider than in respect of a private individual. However, that does not mean that there is no limit, nor does it mean that this circumstance is determinative. We consider that it is a relevant consideration at stage one in determining whether the information which has been published or which is to be published can be characterised as private. However, it is only one factor, and consideration of "the attributes of the claimant" must be balanced against the effect of publication of the information on him. The ordinary conclusion in relation to the effect of publication of information that an individual is under criminal investigation is that damage occurs whatever his characteristic or status. Indeed, ordinarily we would anticipate greater damage to a businessperson actively involved in the affairs of a large public company than to a private individual.

[Sheilbh]

I try not to get too into generational warfare - but it can be challenging

The shrinkflation state
The British state will soon cost more, yet provide less
Feb 19th 2022

SHRINKFLATION IS A bane of the British shopper. For years, producers have quietly cut product sizes rather than raise prices. A multipack of Frazzles, a moreish bacon crisp, used to cost £1 ($1.36) and contain eight bags. Now it contains six. Cadbury's Creme Eggs used to come by the half-dozen; now they come in fives. Quality Street, a chocolate box, weighed 1.2kg in 2009; today, just 650g. A box of Jaffa Cakes once contained a dozen biscuits; now just ten.

The logic of shrinkflation is that consumers are less likely to notice it than its alternative: higher prices. For years, the government has worked on the same principle. Taxpayers paid roughly the same, but state services withered. Now an era of price hikes in the form of tax rises has begun. In a nasty combination of inflation and shrinkflation, voters will be expected to pay more for less.

It will be an awkward shift. Since coming to power in 2010 the Conservatives have used shrinkflation just as retailers do. In the early austerity years the state shrank, but its cost did not. As a percentage of GDP, it fell from a peak after the financial crisis of 46% of GDP to 39%. Taxes stayed around their historic norm of about 32% of GDP. But citizens received fewer services.

And, as when shoppers fail to notice the missing packet of Frazzles or couple of Jaffa cakes, voters did not care much at first. Weekly bin collections became fortnightly or monthly. Once-generous legal aid became miserly; in-work benefits fell; police solved fewer crimes. But eventually voters—and shoppers—start to feel perplexed. Was a box of Quality Street always so small? Were the police always so blasé about fraud? Moreover, shrinkflation cannot continue indefinitely. Just as people will not buy an empty packet of Frazzles, taxpayers will not pay for government services that are not provided at all. Eventually prices must rise—as the Conservatives are discovering. By 2026 the tax burden will be 36% of GDP, the highest since the post-war era, under Clement Attlee.

This will cause several problems. The first is one of expectations. Attlee's government promised a new Jerusalem: voters accepted higher taxes in return for a welfare state. Similarly, when New Labour governments raised taxes in the 2000s, they provided more in return. They increased national insurance, a payroll tax, in order to bring health-care spending in line with other European countries. Schools were rebuilt and renovated; rough sleeping plunged; civic art, albeit sometimes of questionable quality, appeared in town squares.

Unfortunately, this time higher spending will at best stop things getting worse. Sajid Javid, the health secretary, admits that the health- and social-care systems will struggle even after a 2.5 percentage-point rise in national insurance. "Is that all we get for £12bn?" asked the Daily Mail, a newspaper that tends to see eye-to-eye with the Tories, when the plan to cut hospital waiting-lists was announced. British voters are often said to want American taxes and a European welfare state. Instead, they face paying European taxes for services as skimpy as those in America.

The second hitch is a mismatch between who pays and who benefits. The extra taxes are intended for services that largely benefit older voters. According to the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank, by 2032 an extra £100bn (in today's prices) will be spent annually on health care and pensions. This amounts to the bulk of the education budget today. By 2024 the NHS will account for 44% of the state's day-to-day spending, up from about 27% in 2000, says the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank. In relative terms, the rest of the state is shrinking. The British state will increasingly resemble a health-care system with nukes.

This is a poor deal for young people. The parts of the state they rely on, such as in-work benefits, are increasingly flimsy. Yet they will be paying more for services they do not use. Meanwhile, the tax system is changing to their detriment. Soon a pensioner with an annual income of £30,000 will pay a marginal rate of 20%; a 28-year-old graduate on the same salary will face a de facto marginal rate of 42.25%, once student-loan payments and the national-insurance increase are included.

A more expensive state is inevitable. Areas where the state still promises comprehensive support, such as health and social care or education, suffer from "Baumol's cost disease": they are labour-intensive, and hence become relatively pricier as wages rise to keep pace with sectors where productivity improves faster. Teachers' salaries may go up, but the number of children each can teach does not. Demography makes the situation worse. By 2030 there will be 4.4m over-80s, up from 3m at the moment. The state spends around £20,000 per year on each child of school age, but about £40,000 per year on each person in their late 80s.

Life is like a tub of Quality Street

A bigger state can be paid for in three ways. The first is economic growth. If that had continued after the financial crisis at the same pace as before, taxes would bring in about £200bn more annually than they do now, points out the Resolution Foundation. That is enough to cover the entire education and defence budgets, with change left over. Yet neither the Conservatives nor Labour show much appetite for doing what would be necessary. Policies that crush growth (such as leaving the EU) proved popular; those that might boost it (such as planning reform) did not. Too many voters are unwilling to accept the downsides of growth, such as more houses spoiling their view. Many may not feel the need. After all, the state has not shrunk for some.

The second option is a fairer tax system. Asset-rich pensioners could contribute more. Yet higher taxes for older voters are taboo for the same reason that restraining their benefits would be: pensioners vote. But unless the government can convince older voters to carry a larger share of the tax burden, or find ways of boosting growth, it is limited to a third option: cutting services further. Another bout of state shrinkflation looms.

Edit: And on this just seen that the plans for linking Oxford and Cambridge have been cancelled - they were projected to add about 3% to GDP or £60 billion. But people didn't want to build anything.

My view is you can get state funding to be a globally competitive research centre if you accept that it requires development for the research and housing for the workers contributing to that - or you don't get the state funding and can live in a postcard, the research funding meanwhile goes to, say, Hull or Bradford

Or we need a hostage situation - for every planning application denied by a council one listed building is demolished at random.

Edit: And that 42.25% marginal rate for a 28 year old on £30k increases to 50+% if you include employer contributions/taxes. Maybe it's a bad idea that we focus all of our tax base on the productive part of the economy

[Richard Hakluyt]

I don't want to raise your blood pressure further, but imagine a household of 2 reasonably well-off pensioners both on 30k pensions and with stocks and shares isas that bring in another £20k in a typical year.

On an income of £80k their tax liability would be a mere £7k. And they would have no rent/mortgage to pay and (usually) no dependants.

The comparison with a working couple paying rent/mortgage is stark.

We have to tax this large and growing group. I would suggest the gradual imposition of National Insurance on their incomes.

The inequity of the current situation is simply grotesque.

[crazy canuck]

That is the least of it though.  Workers pay the highest taxes because employment income is the thing that all governments tax at the highest rate once you get to the higher end of the tax thresholds.  But it does not take much effort for a lot people to convert that employment income into something else which is taxed at a much lower rate - individual corporate consultants, individual professional corps, etc etc etc.  And with effective tax and investment planning, greatly reduce the amount of taxes paid compared to if the income was all taxed at the same rate as a poor working stiff.

[Josquius]

And thanks to brexit its not like most young people can shop around for a better deal...
I can see a Chinese style lying down movement really kicking off.

[Syt]

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/uk-citizens-were-not-fully-informed-on-implications-of-brexit-eu-report-concludes-312483/

UK citizens were 'not fully informed on implications of Brexit', EU report concludes

MEPs say any other country wanting to trigger the Article 50 process should have to provide a "a blueprint of the future relationship".

British voters were not fully informed on the implications of Brexit during the referendum in 2016, a European Parliament report has concluded.

MEPs believe they could have swung the vote for Remain if they had campaigned and warned the "often misled" British voters of the risks of leaving.

They have asked the European Commission to bring forward legislation to allow European political parties to finance future referendum campaigns on EU treaties in order to make it a more equal fight.

"British citizens had scant knowledge about the European Union and were not adequately informed about the far-reaching consequences of the decision to leave the union," the report said.

"Citizens were never given a clear picture of the relationship that their country would have with the EU once it left, and were often misled about the implications of the withdrawal, especially as regards Northern Ireland."

MEPs regretted the "restraint and limited engagement of the European Parliament and its committees in the run-up to the UK referendum", saying it had left UK citizens "without full access to information on the functioning of the EU and the implications of the withdrawal".

Jean-Claude Juncker, the then president of the European Commission, has said that David Cameron, the prime minister in 2016, had told him not to intervene in the campaign.

Speaking out on the matter in 2019 he admitted he should "not have listened" to the former prime minister.

"They asked me to shut up, so I shut up. That is something I criticise myself for. I should have spoken out rather than stay silent."

In order to avoid another Brexit, member states and EU institutions should "consistently provide wide-reaching information to EU citizens on the functioning of the European Union [...] and the consequences of leaving the EU", the report said.

MEPs said "misinformation" had influenced the UK's vote to leave and warned that future referendums were at risk of "disinformation, foreign interference and funding irregularities".

The report said Brussels had achieved its "key aims" in the Brexit talks through EU unity in the face of a British "rejection of the obligations linked to EU membership". It praised the bloc for swiftly identifying its objectives of securing the financial settlement, or "Brexit bill", protecting the rights of citizens and the circumstances of Ireland.

In contrast, it attacked the UK Government for failing to plan for Brexit, which it said raised "the spectre" of no deal.

"The political and economic consequences of the decision to leave the union are significant," the non-binding report said. "These were not genuinely and fully assessed by the UK prior to its decision to withdraw."

The report said any other country wanting to trigger the Article 50 process should also have to provide a "a blueprint of the future relationship that the withdrawing Member State has in mind".

A UK Government spokesman said: "The British people voted to leave the European Union, and this government delivered on that result. We will go further and faster to deliver on the promise of Brexit and take advantage of the enormous potential that our new freedoms bring."

UK Government spokesman seems to be a Captain Marvel fan.