Amber Rudd is the only Government minister taking Brexit seriously – it’s time the rest of the Cabinet followed suit

At last someone in government is doing what government should do.

Investigating, analysis, assessing, getting accurate facts and figures on a contentious policy area before grandiloquently announcing policy.

So hats off to Home Secretary Amber Rudd and her announcement that the Home Office is to carry out a major inquiry into the presence and utility of European citizens living or working here.

Sadly, the BBC is still calling them “immigrants”. I worked for 15 years in Europe after 1979 and no-one ever called me an “immigrant”. A foreigner, yes, or if they really wanted to insult me, English, but the term “immigrant” is very loaded in all languages. The CEOs of our high street banks, or the head of the LSE, or endless football managers are all strictly speaking “immigrants” from Europe but somehow Messrs Conte, Wenger or Rolet don’t get described as such.

But at last we might get some accurate facts and figures on Europeans living and working in the UK. The head of the Brexit department in the German Foreign Ministry told me earlier this year as I was researching a new book on Brexit that Berlin has been asking London for more than two years for an accurate list of EU citizens in the UK.

None was available. We don’t do ID cards. NI registration is hit and miss and doesn't cover cash-in-hand work. Many do not fill in electoral registration forms. Unlike most European countries no one is obliged to register with a local council or even the police when they rent or buy a home.

In fact, it is surprising that before and since the referendum no one in Whitehall has attempted any serious inquiry into the impact of Brexit on different sectors, regions, universities or all the British expats in Europe.

There have been a few Parliamentary inquiries but these depend often on conflicting statements by witnesses. There is much media comment but most Brexit debate is polemical and denunciatory.

Can other Whitehall departments copy the Home Office and launch Brexit audits so that we can finally move out of the sterile Leave vs Remain Punch and Judy show and have some rational discussion?

There is a good precedent for this. When the Euro was launched many called for the UK to join. This was politically impossible as Tony Blair, before the 1997 election, had announced there would have to be a referendum on Euro entry. I was a PPS and Minister at the FCO 1997-2005 and while strongly pro-European I never thought for an instant that there was any chance of Blair committing a David Cameron type of political suicide by risking a referendum.

As Blair said to me one day, “I am not going to go down in history as the PM that took us out of Europe.” Instead, he passed the hot potato to Gordon Brown who, before 1997, was even more Europhile than Blair. Brown dreamt up the famous five economic tests and the Treasury went to work producing five volumes of thousands of pages on all aspects of possible Euro entry.

Everyone in government knew that this was a way of buying time as the decision had been made not to risk a referendum. But the work was of high intellectual quality and showed a serious government seriously examining the consequences and costs of such a major decision.

On Brexit we embarked on taking an even bigger decision without any real examination. Now Amber Rudd has taken the lead in deciding we do need a proper Brexit audit on Europeans working here.

Other departments could do the same on analysing what will happen to foreign direct investment if we leave the single market without a new trade deal. The Northern Ireland department and FCO should be looking at the consequences of leaving the Customs Union on border custom checks in Northern Ireland. What will happen to university funding once European money is cut off and can the Transport Department report on what leaving EU open sky arrangements means for aviation?

May is holidaying in Italy where no decision is taken at federal, cantonal or communal level without exhaustive inquiries into pro and cons. When she comes home she should ask all her cabinet ministers to produce Brexit audits so that in every sector the public can feel confident that the Government has fully examined the consequences of different types of Brexit before it is too late.

Denis MacShane is the former UK minister for Europe. He is author of “Brexit, No Exit. Why (in the End) Britain Won’t Leave Europe” (IB Tauris) and works as a senior advisor for Avisa Partners, Brussels advising governments and firms on EU policy and politics