Treasury ‘is now an EU propaganda machine’
Warning from top academics
THE Treasury has been turned into a pro- Brussels ‘ propaganda machine’, leading academics warned last night.
The internationally respected Cass Business School said most research had found Britain leaving the EU would make little difference to the economy.
But the Government has instead chosen to publish ‘ highly prejudiced’ and ‘ doom mongering’ reports warning the UK would be poorer by £4,300 per household by 2030 and be hit by an immediate recession.
David Blake, professor of pension economics at Cass, which is based at City University London, accused the Treasury of churning out ‘ grossly exaggerated’ warnings on the dangers of Brexit. His report on the ‘extraordinary abuse of economic models’ found the system used by the Treasury would generate predictions that the UK would be better off signing up to the euro – and every country in the world would benefit economically from joining the EU.
David Cameron and George Osborne ‘have used the reports to ramp up the scaremongering’, he claimed. The Treasury has published a study featuring the £4,300 claim, and another predicting house prices could take a 10 per cent hit if Britain exits.
Professor Blake said: ‘ There is doommongering on every page of the two (Treasury) reports. It’s no different from the way children are frightened into doing what their parents want. We are all being treated like children.’
He added: ‘The British Treasury has in effect become a propaganda machine for a political institution led by (European Commission president) Jean-Claude Juncker – a man who has declared his hostility to “democratic choice” when it comes to the wishes of the European people. This whole exercise is utterly dangerous for democracy.’
The Treasury’s research assumes the UK would be unable to negotiate more favourable trading arrangements than it has now with either the EU or the rest of the world, according to the academic.
Using economic models that focused on international rather than European trade ‘it might well have found the UK would be better off leaving the EU’, he said. Change inevitably means some will gain while others lose out, but by ‘focusing only on economic issues, the Treasury’s two reports present a highly prejudiced case for remaining in the EU’, Professor Blake said.
He added: ‘Most of the other
‘Ramping up the scaremongering’
economic models that have examined the economic consequences of Brexit – and which have been entirely ignored by the Treasury – find that it will make little difference to the UK’s economy whether the UK stays in or leaves the EU.’
Professor Blake is also director of the Pensions Institute and chairman of Square Mile Consultants, a training and research consultancy. He holds senior researcher positions at institutions linked to the London School of Economics.
Last month, the influential Treasury select committee hit out at both sides in the EU referendum campaign for misleading the public. MPs said Remain’s claim that 3million jobs were dependent on Britain’s continued EU membership was ‘misleading’.
They also warned the claim that families would be worse off by £4,300 a year as a result of Brexit was ‘likely to be misconstrued by readers ... and has probably confused them’.
Both sides were guilty of a ‘mountain of exaggeration and unqualified assertion’, the MPs concluded. The report said: ‘The public debate is being poorly served by inconsistent, unqualified and – in some cases – misleading claims and counter- claims. Members of both the Leave and Remain camps are making such claims.’ On the Leave side, they were highly critical of the claim that £350million is sent to Brussels every week.
A Remain campaign spokesman said: ‘The Cass report is riddled with false claims and includes no new analysis.
‘It claims that most other models predict very little impact from Brexit. This is completely untrue. The Treasury paper includes a wide review of other studies and there is an overwhelming consensus amongst economists, as polls have shown, that Brexit would be damaging.
‘All serious independent organisations, including the IMF and OECD, have warned of the negative economic effects of Brexit. It is this report, not the Treasury’s, that is totally out of step with the facts and economic consensus.’