Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:57 pm on 14 June 2022.
Thank you, Llywydd. Gross domestic product is down in the UK for the second month running, an initial drop of 0.1 per cent in March followed by an unexpected slump of 0.3 per cent in April. Some would point to COVID and the war in Ukraine as the overriding reasons, but that doesn't explain why the UK is doing so much worse than other countries. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development the UK will next year stagnate and be the worst-performing economy among the group of seven leading industrialised nations by a significant margin. The Centre for European Reform last week said that Britain was £31 billion worse off than it would have been without the dual impact of Brexit and COVID, but that the bigger impact by far was the effect from Brexit. Isn't it the case that far from the promised sunlit uplands, Brexit is beginning to cast a long shadow on our economy at a time when we can least afford it?