industry focus
Retailer Rose tackles thorny issue of 'Brexit"
Britain would be landed with £11bn in new tariffs if it left the EU and did not get a free trade agreement, according to Lord Stuart Rose, the CEO of online supermarket Ocado.
Lord Rose, the former head of Marks & Spencer, heads up the ‘Britain Stronger in Europe’ campaign group which has published research suggesting that the UK would have to begin trading with the EU using World Trade Organisation rules, which would cost businesses and consumers more.
The businessman who has been joined by other retail CEOs including bosses at ASDA, Burberry, Dixon Carphone, Kingfisher, Kurt Geiger and Mothercare, said that the campaigns arguing that Britain should leave the EU are proposing a specific deal: ending all budget contributions, ending free movement and repatriating economic regulations while retaining full access to the single market.
“The ‘Leave Europe’ campaigns’ proposals are a pipedream. They do not have a credible or achievable alternative which can replicate, let alone improve upon, the benefits the single market brings, and if they were to pursue their terms as currently proposed there would be a real risk of Britain leaving Europe with no trade deal at all,” Rose said.
The ‘Britain Stronger in Europe’ campaign said this would be the equivalent of £176 for every person and £426 for every household in Britain. The figure is based on UK imports from the EU at a value of £220bn, facing a tariff set at a level of “most favoured nations”.
The research was designed to back up claims by Sir John Major, the former prime minister that the UK is on a dangerous course by flirting with leaving the EU while the rest of the world is coming together.
Sir John said: “The whole world is coming together and for the United Kingdom, 67 million out of a world population of seven billion, to break off and head off into splendid isolation doesn’t seem to me to be in our interests now, or perhaps more important, in the interests of our children and our grandchildren.”
He predicted any break up would be acrimonious, adding once outside the EU “we may get a very substandard deal to enter the single market”.
