Eustice ‘happy to live with consequences’ of Brexit despite forecast GDP hit
Environment secretary George Eustice has said he is “quite happy to live with the consequences” of Brexit after the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast that the economic impacts would be double that of the pandemic.
Speaking to BBC 4 Today’s Nick Robinson, and proposed with the government appointed OBR’s estimate, the minister said: “Well I’m quite happy to live with the consequences of leaving the EU.
“We are a self-governing country again for the first time in decades. We’re controlling our own waters, we’ve got an increase in fishing quotas for our fishermen, we’re changing our agriculture policy completely.”
OBR chairman Richard Hughs said the fiscal watchdog had assumed that leaving the union would cut long term GDP by around four per cent.
He told the BBC yesterday: “We think that the effect of the pandemic will reduce that (GDP) output by a further two per cent.
“In the long term, it is the case that Brexit has a bigger impact than the pandemic.”
Eustice argued that the added freedom with policy meant that regulatory overhauls would gear up the economy – but said that the OBR’s recent estimate was an “old figure”.
“We’ve got that freedom to have coherent good policy and this old figure about the impacts of Brexit, we’ve heard all of that before,” the environment secretary said.