Tag: Oliver Wyman

Household bills will rise by between £245 and £1,961 a year after Brexit, with a disproportionately adverse impact on lower-income groups and people in Northern Ireland, Wales, the Midlands and the north-east, they say. The Institute for Public Policy Research found a hard Brexit would hit those out of London the most because household spending patterns involved more goods and services that will be hit by price rises. It modelled post-Brexit costs on a basket of 150 imports and found that prices would rise for all consumers regardless of income or where they lived. But in poorer areas the impact of increased costs in goods that attract higher tariffs such as meat and dairy products would be greatest because a greater proportion of household income would go on weekly shopping bills and transport, for example. It calculated that almost £1,000 a year would be added to household spending under the worst-case scenario of a hard Brexit, which it said would cause significant red tape and have World Trade Organization tariffs and increased labour costs. The price of a restaurant meal would go up because of increased cost of imported food and labour because of trade and non-trade barriers in every Brexit scenario, it said. Oliver Wyman concluded Northern Ireland, which has the poorest economy of the 12 regions of the UK, would be hit worst by increased costs. Reaching the same conclusion as the IPPR, Oliver Wyman found that the savings in importing goods from non-EU countries did not outweigh the increased costs of EU imports under every Brexit scenario. “Given that the EU will continue to negotiate trade deals with third countries, it is hard to see how the UK could significantly outpace the EU in negotiating agreements that lower consumer prices,” it said. But as Brewer pointed out, such a free trade agreement on Argentinian beef would only result in a 20p per kilo saving on beef – not enough to compensate for the higher cost of imports of other goods such as dairy, cars parts or electronics from the EU.