Claims that Britain would be better off outside the EU are spurious, misleading and built on sand, say business leaders. Business for New Europe, the pro-European business campaign, was commenting on the Business for Britain report Change or Go, which has been serialised in the Telegraph.
Lucy Thomas, Campaign Director of Business for New Europe, said: “Business for Britain’s sums have now gone from bad to worse. The more we see of their calculations about the benefits of our EU membership the clearer it is that they simply have no idea what life after exit would really look like for the UK.
“They have now let the cat out of the bag by admitting that every penny of the structural funding that we received from the EU would disappear overnight if we left Europe. That could run into billions of pounds and their assumption that the UK government would simply pick up the tab is neither credible nor likely.
“While they claim that UK businesses would still be free to trade with Europe, they’ve chosen to ignore the reality that without access to the Single Market UK firms would face new tariffs and restrictions when selling their goods and services to our neighbours in Europe.
“Their analysis fails to consider the foreign investors who would move their operations to Europe to stay in the Single Market; the vast amount of red tape British exporters would have to abide by; and the loss of power over EU regulations with which we would have to abide anyway.
“Business for Britain also assume that Britain would immediately scrap all regulations. Certain regulations, such as the REACH directive on chemicals, add slightly to the cost of a product in order to protect consumers and the environment. This report assumes that Britain outside the EU would simply scrap such common-sense protections.
“The truth is that overall we pay less into the EU than Germany, and the economic benefits of our membership are estimated at between £62-78bn a year which is £3,000 for every household in the UK.
“Under any of the scenarios proposed by those arguing for a British exit from Europe it is simply impossible for them to answer just how many jobs would be lost here. Exit is not a risk worth taking, because at a time when we still face a challenging economic climate, it makes no sense to put jobs and investment in jeopardy.”
Notes to Editors:
- The economic benefit of the UK being in the single market is worth approximately £62-78bn a year, or £3,000 per household. (CBI, ‘Our Global Future’ report - http://www.cbi.org.uk/media/2451423/our_global_future.pdf)
- The UK makes a smaller contribution EU budget than the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, or Sweden (House of Commons Library -http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN06455#fullreport)
- From 2014-2020, the UK will receive €11.8bn from the Cohesion Policy (European Commission, Cohesion Policy and the United Kingdom, 2014 - http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/information/cohesion-policy-achievement-and-future-investment/factsheet/united_kingdom_en.pdf)
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