Posted on: 17th January 2018 Posted by: thetorch Comments: 0

Brexit could lose the British economy £54 billion and 500,000 jobs by 2030, shocking new independent research commissioned by the Mayor of London has revealed.

The study, which was conducted by Cambridge Econometrics, considered the potential economic damage of Brexit across multiple potential scenarios, including the ‘Hard Brexit’ outcome which senior Conservative figures have been hinting at recently. While the report found that every Brexit scenario would seriously harm the UK’s economic prospects, this ‘Hard Brexit’ scenario, which would see Britain locked out of the Single Market and Customs Union, was found to be the most damaging to the UK, with job numbers reduced by hundreds of thousands and the size of the economy slashed by billions over the next twelve years.

This alarming revelation comes mere weeks after Brexit secretary David Davis faced calls to resign following his admission that the Government had not conducted impact assessments on the risk of Brexit to various key UK sectors. The publishing of this report, the results of which echo the pre-referendum warnings of the International Monetary Fund and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, could raise more questions over the direction of Brexit and whether Britain’s leadership are doing enough to inform the public about the risks of a ‘Hard Brexit’ outcome.

In the wake of this report the government was warned by prominent Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb not to ignore the potential economic risk of a ‘Hard Brexit’, stating that it was “vital that we recognise the importance, for our exporters, of the single market and the customs union”.

The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, said that these findings indicated that Britain may suffer a ‘lost decade’ if the UK is left out of the single market and customs union. Jeremy Corbyn, who last week rejected an invitation a cross-party summit on fighting against a ‘Hard Brexit’, is yet to respond to these worrying results.

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