Andrew Dismore

In the Assembly Budget Meeting, I again raised Brexit with the Mayor in light of the then impending decisions on the triggering of Article 50.

 

See also the Mayor’s speech at Davos

 

The importance of financial  services to the economy is shown in a recent  House of Commons briefing paper  on Statistics on UK-EU trade, which shows that British banks, money managers, insurers, pension firms, consultants, accounts, and lawyers sold £48.8 billion-worth of services to EU countries in 2015, the most recent year for which figures are available. This is equivalent to:

• Over 50% of all services exported from Britain to the EU each year;
• Over 20% of all British exports to the EU;
• Almost 10% of all the UK’s exports globally.

 

The impact of the post referendum drop in the value of the pound is already affecting our procurement costs; I have found out for example that the cost of each of the new fire engines we are buying for the fire brigade has gone up by £11,000, due to the cost of the parts made in continental Europe.

 

I raised the issue of procurement with the Mayor, as it obviously goes much wider than this.

 

I have produced another Brexit Briefing paper, this time on the controversial issue of   EU Migration.

 

Finally, you may be interested in this month’s MQs I raised about Brexit and the answers.