UK Treasury warns country will be much poorer with Brexit

London

UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said that a UK Treasury analysis showed that the UK would be "permanently poorer" if the nation left the European Union.

The 200-page Treasury document, written by government economists, estimates that Brexit would cause a fall in investment, trade and growth so that by 2030, the UK economy would be 6 per cent smaller than it would have been as an EU member.

Mr Osborne said the smaller size of the economy projected in the report was the equivalent of £4,300 (S$ 8,295) per household.

Brexit campaigners called the claims "absurd" and "worthless" given the Treasury's past erratic forecasting record. Conservative MP John Redwood, who is campaigning to leave the EU, said that in 1992 when David Cameron was an official of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont, the Treasury backed joining the European Exchange Rate Mec…