European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Hannay of Chiswick and Lord Howard of Rising

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, seems to place great faith in these assessments or forecasts—but they have almost universally been completely wrong, ever since before the referendum. If noble Lords would like an example, I have from the House of Commons Library some comments on the Treasury:

“In May 2016, the Treasury published forecasts for the immediate economic impact of voting to leave the EU. It forecast for a recession to occur in the second half of 2016, with quarterly GDP growth of minus 0.1% in both Q3 2016 and Q4 2016”.


A second “severe shock” scenario was an even worse forecast.

“In reality, the economy continued to grow at its pre-referendum pace, with quarterly growth of +0.6%”.


That has now been adjusted by the Governor of the Bank of England to close to 2%. Frankly, the assessments and the forecasts are absolute rubbish and there is no point in publishing them.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I remind the noble Lord that the impact assessment he is reading from was of course produced by the Government that he supports—although he seems to have little shame about that now. Moreover, if one looks at government legislation that comes through every day, hundreds of impact assessments are produced by the Government he supports. Is he saying that they are all rubbish?