'˜Skulduggery' over Brexit income figures: Sammy Wilson

The East Antrim MP was reacting to comments made by Mark Carney on Tuesday to Westminster’s treasury select committee, saying that the referendum result had lowered growth by “up to 2%” when compared with what the bank had expected in 2016 if the UK had voted to remain in the EU.

Mr Carney had added that the tangible effect of this on people’s lives is that “real household incomes are about £900 lower than we forecast in 2016”.

Sammy Wilson, an ex-economics teacher and former Stormont finance minister, said this was an “extremely misleading” set of “fantasy figures”, borne of the “desperation of the pro-EU establishment to bring influence to bear and keep us tied to the EU”.

Mr Wilson said that Mr Carney’s predictions about the state of the post-Brexit vote economy had repeatedly proven wrong, adding: “As to this figure of every household being £900 worse off, it is little more than statistical skulduggery. It was arrived at by comparing actual growth with the rate of growth predicted by the Bank of England.

“No-one including the Bank of England knows whether its predicted figure of 2.8% would ever have materialised. Indeed, given how inaccurate its previous predictions were it is most unlikely that the 2.8% prediction is anything other than a growth rate picked out of the air. That being the case, the £900 figure is speculative at best and downright misleading at worst.”