Brexit boosts British food spending by £6 billion (study) – News

Britain’s exit from the European Union nearly two years ago has raised British consumer spending on food by nearly 6 billion pounds ($7.35 billion), hitting the poor hardest, according to a study by the London School of Economics (LSE). Thursday (1st).

“Leaving the European Union would add an average of £210 to household food spending over the two years to the end of 2021, costing British consumers a total of £5.8 billion,” said the LSE’s Center for Economic Performance Studies. .

“Given that low-income households spend a higher proportion on food on average compared to wealthier households, these Brexit-related spending increases affect them disproportionately,” he said in a note.

Overall, Brexit led to a 6% increase in food prices, according to the LSE study.

Brexit came into effect on January 1, 2021, but the UK officially left the EU a year earlier and companies started preparing before this date.

The LSE examined 2020, the peak of the pandemic, and 2021, the first real year of Brexit, suggesting the cost of leaving the EU could rise significantly in the coming years.

Inflation in the UK in particular is on the rise, rising to 11% in 2022, the highest in 40 years.

Professor Richard Davies of the University of Bristol said “many factors are at play”, such as rising energy prices after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but “increasing regulatory and administrative barriers” with the EU. – Author of the study.

The EU and the UK signed a post-Brexit free trade agreement that eliminated most tariffs on traded goods but reimposed customs and health restrictions.

All of these practices represent costs for companies, which they pass on to customers.

Many business leaders, including supporters of leaving the EU, have recently lamented the lack of European workers in the UK as a result of Brexit.

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© Agence France-Presse