The Bank of England is anticipating a no deal Brexit could cost London’s financial centre 75,000 jobs, according to reports.
Bank officials regarded the figure as a “reasonable scenario” if Britain leaves the EU without a deal, The BBC’s economics correspondent Kamal Ahmed has claimed.
The fate of the City has been a major fear over Brexit, with forecasts that banks and financial companies could move to elsewhere in the EU to preserve the “passporting” right to operate across the bloc if this is lost in Britain’s EU withdrawal.
Though the Bank had not publicly commented on the story, think tank The Centre For London said it chimed with its findings in a report from July that said 70,000 jobs were at risk.
Richard Brown, research director at The Centre For London, told HuffPost UK: “These figures match previous predictions and underline the serious risks to London’s service sector of leaving the EU with no deal or a bad deal.
“Like many service sector exporters, banks and financial institutions depend on the complex frameworks of the Single Market to trade across Europe.
“If they are locked out of the Single Market, they will have to consider relocation in order to maintain business as usual.”
Reuters polled more than 100 companies that employ people in London’s and found Brexit would cost 10,000 jobs there.
HuffPost UK understands the Bank regards this was a “day one” figure and the total jobs lost could be much higher if Britain leaves the Single Market.
Analysis by Oliver Wyman, a management consultancy, has also predicted 75,000 job losses and that a no deal Brexit could put half of the UK finance sector’s business with the EU at risk.
It said up to 35,000 jobs could go as businesses relocate and the “knock on” affect of their departure could cost another 40,000 jobs.
The Bank has never projected a figure for job losses likely to be caused by Brexit on the record.
Governor Mark Carney gave a speech in September in which he said Brexit would mean wages would rise slower.
“Monetary policy cannot prevent the weaker real incomes likely to accompany the move to new trading arrangements with the EU, but it can influence how this hit to incomes is distributed between job losses and price rises,” he told The International Monetary Fund in September.
He added “abrupt decreases in migration” could cause labour shortages in sectors that depend on them and cause inflation.