Brexiteer economist Professor Patrick Minford has been reminded of claims that there would be an “eight per cent drop” in the cost of living on “day one of leaving the EU”.
The veteran Cardiff Business School professor, who has been cited by Liz Truss during her campaign to become the next prime minister of the United Kingdom, said simulations of what leaving the EU would look like showed a sizeable drop in how much people pay for goods and services.
He made the comments during a Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry in 2015, with the forecasts picked up by campaign group Leave.EU as part of their marketing efforts.
Britain has since been thrown into a cost-of-living crisis, with soaring inflation and record energy bills leaving some households with a choice between heating or eating.
In support of Liz Truss’s tax-cutting proposals to tackle the crisis, Minford recently said that the British economy is in much better shape to withstand the increase in borrowing needed to fund the expensive tax cuts proposed by the Tory party leadership candidate.
It has been reported that one option on the table for addressing the crisis is a 5 per cent cut to the 20 per cent headline rate of VAT, saving the average household more than £1,300 per year.
But The Sun suggested Ms Truss is being pressured by allies to slash the rate even further – down to 10 per cent, at great cost to the Treasury.
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