Treasury: households £4,300 a year poorer if we Brexit
The Treasury says national income will be 6% lower by 2030 if we leave the European Union.
Every household in Britain could be £4,300 a year worse off by 2030 if we leave the EU - with the poor especially hard hit.
That's according to the Treasury, which has today published a 200-page analysis on EU membership and its alternatives. George Osborne wrote in the Times that the report “steps away from the rhetoric” and sets out the facts.
On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the chancellor said: “The conclusions could not be clearer. Britain would be permanently poorer if we left the EU to the tune of £4,300 for every household in the country”.
He highlighted that the poorest would be worst affected by a Brexit, mentioning those who work in car plants and steel making factories.
All alternative relationships with the EU would mean a more closed economy, lower trade, lower investment, lower living standards
— George Osborne (@George_Osborne) April 18, 2016
Commenting on the findings, TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said:
“Today’s figures are a sobering reality check. For working people the message is clear: vote leave, get poorer.
“Brexit campaigners have yet to come up with any convincing answers for how a post-Brexit economy would function. They have nothing to offer but a future of lower pay and fewer jobs.
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'Erroneous'
Vote Leave has dismissed the report as ‘erroneous’. Conservative MP John Redwood, who is on the Leave side, told the Today programme that the forecasts were ‘completely worthless’ given its past record:
"This is a Treasury which failed to forecast the huge damage membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism inflicted on us and they were always very keen to join us and it gave us a huge recession. They failed to forecast the damage to the UK of the Eurozone crisis of 2011".
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