Politics.co.uk:
Why is the government so afraid to publish its Brexit impact studies?
24 August 2017
There has been a veritable flood of studies indicating what an economic disaster awaits us if the government pursue its preferred hard Brexit route. If the government's own studies contain anything to counter this overwhelmingly pessimistic outlook, why have they not been released? We can only conclude that either the government is running scared of its own extreme form of leaving the EU, or it wants to keep a lid on the dire consequences of it. It's probably safe to assume therefore that the government's own analysis agrees with a recent Local Business Survey. It showed that of 419 small and medium sized enterprises surveyed in the South West of England, 57% of exporters believed the impact of leaving the single market will be 'negative' or 'very negative'. This compared with just ten per cent who think the impact will be 'positive' or 'very positive'. Or a recent study from the Centre for Economic Performance that examined the negative impacts of trade barriers. It predicts that under either a soft or hard Brexit scenario, leaving the EU will have a devastating impact on the economic performance of our towns and cities.
Related publications
‘Brexit, Trade and the Economic Impacts on UK Cities’, Naomi Clayton and Henry Overman, Centre for Cities briefing, July 2017