 See, I think all of us who have been here all afternoon have had an extraordinarily informative and set of presentations and extremely good discussion. I certainly, Brexit is kind of new every day, or at least new every week, sometimes you feel you have sort of heard it all a bit before but I certainly didn't feel I heard it all a bit before today, it was really excellent. So this final session is, we have got three speakers. First is John McGrane, who is the director general of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce. John set this up in 2011 and the surprises that we hadn't had us 20, 30 or 40 years earlier. Certainly a long time earlier and then who sooner had he set it up and then we get Brexit, which is going in the opposite direction. Somehow or other, I'm not doing cause and effect because it is quite interesting that we actually had that. But it is quite interesting about our relationship in terms of the two islands that that business commercial relationship had not developed whereas it would have been true in a lot of other countries. Our next speaker, we haven't properly met what we've seen across the table, is Jürgen Mathes, who is the head of research unit for international economics and economic outlook at the German Economic Institute in Cologne. And then our third speaker is Liz McGrane, who is the CEO of the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce. So in some sense, another part of this mechanism. So I'm going to ask John first to speak. And I think we've got a very nice passion going ahead of five minutes each. And then for the discussion. So John, do you want to? Thank you, Francis, for a meal of market. And good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. And congratulations again to the Institute of International European Affairs on hosting yet another really high grade conversation. So the organization that I run is a small but perfectly formed little body concerned and obsessed indeed with just one thing, which is trade. The trade between the two islands, north, south, east, west, for anybody new to the conversation. And there couldn't be anybody new to the conversation at this house. But just to remind ourselves, that's 65 billion in trade, both directions every year. It's 400,000 jobs directly, roughly evenly split on both islands and many hundreds of thousands more in the supply chain on both islands. It does feel a little bit like deja vu, Francis. Have we all heard it all before? And it doesn't seem like that long since the day after the referendum. I stood here and talked about our friends in the UK having taken back control of which fought to shoot themselves in and promptly shooting themselves in hours. And I've cracked that bad gag too many times over the two and a half years. But I haven't been arrested for it yet because actually our friends, most of them do get that joke that they too are bemused by what on earth has happened. But they're stuck and they cannot get out of that. I've just come back from spending the last four days at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham working as hard as you can to try and figure out the unfigurable. The serious point I would relay right away is that if we think that whatever is coming down the track in the next few weeks or longer is going to solve the problem, it won't. The depth and vitriol I think was the word used earlier on of division inside English society and I choose those words carefully is I think almost unmendable at this stage, although there are great diplomats and former diplomats in the room who would say that is the purpose of diplomacy to put Humphrey back together again. I was personally shocked this week more than ever to see the scale of division and the polarization and it does make me fear that the risk has quite obviously gone up but in more real terms than just polling the difference in opinion inside British life including British business life and I'm shocked and somewhat ashamed to say that because business leaders are citizens as well and in many cases business leaders are 50-50 divided in their view should the UK stay or leave and that lies behind a lot of what's been happening. Business was extremely late to wake up and speak up, you know that and really up until essentially Airbus which was really only at about May, June this year came out and said we are really in danger of walking over a cliff here. It was the first proper time, a serious industry in the UK, CBI notwithstanding, Federation Small Business notwithstanding, Chambers of Commerce notwithstanding was the first time a serious business came out and said this is trouble and it's going to happen. We are going to not employ the several tens of thousands of people that we employ in Britain mostly in Wales by the way, all of which Wales voted to leave by the way along with Cornwall also funded 100% by the EU, you know all of those bad gags but the serious point is Airbus started a flood that over the subsequent weeks we've seen several warnings from people like Jaguar Land Rover I mean Jaguar Land Rover in February said they were going to close one of their just three production lines in Halewood, so cut a third of their production capacity a little bit about Dieselgate but a lot about Brexit and what did they announce the following day, their newest actual investment in the future of autonomous digital driving design and automation where did they say they would make that investment in Shannon where you just need brains and broadband and we've, well we've got the brains and please God we'll get the broadband but like you don't need heavy metal production facilities to build autonomous research centres and the serious point under all of this is that business has been late but it is finally registering so Jaguar have since moved to a three day production week anyway a little bit of Dieselgate but a lot of Brexit uncertainty BMW have said they will move the iconic mini brand out of Britain all of Sunderland we were there on the night in various establishments around this town watching for Sunderland to come in after the Hebrides and Gibraltar we remember it well everybody in Sunderland voted to leave 34,000 people in Sunderland work for Nissan and its supply chain and 80% of what Nissan does depends on open links to the European Union all of that was lost until recently and we say now, or I say now that Mrs May and I watched her this week, she's between a hard Brexit and a hard border and the hard Brexit piece has finally registered we've been talking about the hard border since 15 December when I and my team were in Brussels last year for the day of the backstop and we know all about that and its various reiterations but the hard Brexit piece is the piece that's finally come onto the table and it is the reason in my personal view why the middle shall hold the only thing business in Britain that was touched on earlier on fears more than Brexit is Jeremy Corbyn and the only thing that's keeping the Brexiteers from mawling Mrs May and she survived is the realisation that Corbyn just could get into power and they could lose so you've got in my view and it's an entirely personal view a momentum bad word in this case probably in the labour context that is basically binding the centre together and enabling Mrs May to have survived in Birmingham and to do what we all needed to do was to not fall off the horse and Mrs May is brilliant at not falling off the horse she is control personified and she remains in control so the next few weeks please God she has the space to actually get back to work one of the privileges being involved in the policy formation work and the business connectivity that the British House Chamber does is we get to meet some really high grade public servants on this island, on the other island and in Europe and we have the height to regard for what our civil servants and our politicians and the risks that they take every day and they get no applause for that we need them to be given the space to do the work that now remains in the space between the cauldron of Birmingham and the resolution hopefully of mid-November in Brussels at 3am in the morning and all the theatre that Europe loves to do with all of that but if it leads to the typical European result and the smoke clears and we get a famous papam and we have a deal we think that the failure to win a deal is actually Armageddon I know that with somebody I was in the back but somebody spoke earlier I want to say it's not Armageddon I won't even begin to bore you with the list of business model collapses this morning I did some work with one of Ireland's largest retailers who are telling their suppliers that they expect every single one of them to have those chill goods on the shelf at 10 past 8 every morning per contract or they will not renew their contract so that's all a little bit almost bullying but we're seeing the same in the UK and what's happening is the supply chain back up in behind the conduct of everyday business for food and goods and everything else is going to be absolutely thrown into disarray the ports have absolutely no capability to do that apologies to anybody running ports but it's not about the port people there is no planned land around the Irish ports Cork and Rosslair in particular I'm thinking about Dublin will be fine but the M50 won't because the trucks will simply back up onto the arterial routes and that's just here in Britain it's that to the times of exponential so it is Armageddon and we spent all of our time now working with politicians to help them to understand the implications of the decisions that they're making and the arcane terminology of WTO and 72% tariffs on beef and all that and we respect that they weren't elected for their trade organisation prowess they are public representatives it's very important in advocacy and including the IIA that we help public servants to understand the implications we think a deal would be crafted but that's only the first step it's the forged words the word smithing that's going on around the clock now and we respect that process so that the same words can mean different things to different people in a month's time the work only starts then the first thing we need is a much extended transition period 21 months to the end of 2020 wouldn't do anything and the process will need to be extended almost indefinitely to allow for the crafting of a full up future trade deal that lastly critically must do the thing that even checkers didn't put into the mix and in Birmingham this week people were criticising Mrs May for saying chuck checkers like they were saying chuck checkers it's not good enough in Europe checkers wouldn't have been agreed anyway because for many many reasons but not least because it doesn't acknowledge services and for all of us who understand the goods and trade we do every day we know that there's no goods without services anymore Mrs May borrowed our line on Andrew Marsh and said it's not just about importing the photocopier from Italy it's about allowing the engineer to travel six months later to give it a good thump in the middle of of Huddersfield when it breaks down so that services and goods combined we think that over the next few weeks and we hope a deal will be found we think the business needs to be out front and airing its point of view and it's better late than never and we take our hats off to the people who have to do the toughest work which is our public representatives and officials thanks very much Thank you very much as well for the invitation to the hosts of this event to Adenauer Stiftung and the other institutes great pleasure to be here I'm Jürgen Matus from the German Economic Institute we are the largest privately funded think tank in Germany and I had the international team as you heard and I will speak to you about the macroeconomic impacts of Brexit both of you have more of the business aspect and I bring in the macroeconomic aspect I will frame it in the question that before the referendum you had these quotes by Michael Gove and Boris Johnson that there will be great opportunities, there will be a soft Brexit and everything will be fine and global Britain will be great and full of opportunities Michael Gove we will hold all the cards so what is really in there and what can we say as economists as far as the long term and the short term impact of Brexit is concerned we did a study shortly before the referendum on the long term impact so if Brexit comes obviously this depends on the scenario that our Brexit or a soft Brexit we didn't do our own calculations but we did a meta study and I think it was very striking that before the referendum you had basically results between plus 10% by Brexit of Patrick Minford and the economist for Brexit and plus minus 20% which would be lost because EU integration would bring as much as that some calculations maybe not perfectly robust so it's a huge spectrum, we looked deeper and found that basically if you do right calculations and put in the pros and cons of Brexit you get to a clear negative impact but most of the studies basically said well it's only in the single digit, low single digit area 2, 3, 4 percentage points over 10, 15 years and this is little and it enabled the Brexiteers to say well we take back control and the economy doesn't matter and this was difficult and we as economists thought well what are we talking about with all the globalization and since David Ricardo and Adam Smith there must be more in deeper into these studies and found that basically the models that are really reliable they are unfortunately still unable to get in all the positive aspects of economic integration so they just come out with too few or too low results so we try to figure out with different methods where the results could be and came out with a kind of warning that said basically in a hard Brexit scenario you could easily come to the 10% digit change and this obviously matters this would cost jobs but again this is a calculation which is very difficult to do what we now are able to do is to look at the short term impact since the referendum basically the only two aspects that we have basically is the devaluation of the British Pound and uncertainty and uncertainty obviously rising was just what you mentioned and what we had before because of the danger of a no deal scenario the devaluation of the British Pound made exports of the UK a bit cheaper but it didn't really help a lot and by the way it made German exports to the UK obviously more expensive and we did a calculation that basically came out that if the Pound devaluates by 10% you could expect a decline in German merchandise exports to the UK by about 6% and this was basically as there was a devaluation of a bit more than 10% you then really saw in the second half of 2016 so six months after the referendum a decline of German exports to the UK by 7% which was a lot because exports to the UK grew by 5% to 10% in the years before so there was a good bit of change so what was again helping the Brexiteers in their argumentation was that many studies that came out before the referendum said well if there is a pro-Brexit referendum you will have a recession basically shortly afterwards that didn't happen the business cycle indicators went down immediately but they went up again so really basically the growth momentum was maintained but this was mainly because private consumption in the UK was very dynamic and it stayed like that and the labour market also was very positive what we see now time after time is the effects of uncertainty and the effects of the pound devaluation and they are a drag on growth the UK economy grew before the referendum by 2.2% to 2.5% something like that on average in the years before so very solid what is now the case is and they grew much faster than the euro area now it's the opposite way so now the euro area grows faster and the UK grows less dynamically about 1.5% only why? because of the impact of the devaluation because the devaluation made imports more expensive this led to an increase of inflation and as nominal wages grew about the same real wages declined so consumption growth which was about 3% a year and down to 1.5% and this was an important drag because private consumption is a huge part of GDP of growth and also private investment you see is declining a lot what is most striking to us is that also investment from abroad to the UK is declining from 2000 to 2016 so long-term average FDI inflows, foreign direct investment inflows were by far the largest among EU member states by far really and in the last year the UK was only fifth or sixth so it declined from 65 billion a year on average to 15 billion so this is again a manifestation of the uncertainty and it's important to see that the UK will and this will probably go on into the future because the UK will lose the function as a bridgehead for international companies that go to the UK and then serve because of language and because of a relatively free market and that serve from the UK the EU market and this will no longer be possible if we don't get a very soft Brexit so this is what we see a decline in growth for different reasons and a loss of attractiveness as an investment location and I think this is important to note however even with a growth rate of 1.5% where we are now and most projections are staying for the next few years around this digit this will not lead to much unemployment the labour market is pretty strong so the question is will the people realise that Brexit is really a drag on their economy maybe not and this is obviously not or if you talk about a second referendum obviously if people don't feel the damage they won't change their minds well they know well economy might not grow as dynamically as before but they don't know that it could have grown by 2.5% now it grows by 1.5% and if they don't lose their job nothing changed so very much I think the last word is again on the future and again connected to this bridgehead argumentation I think when Theresa Mayn Birmingham came on stage she did this dance because before she was dancing in Kenya and this kind of leads back to what we heard from others is that the UK cannot defy gravity which means but gravity now in a trade sense that means if you try to describe how intensively you trade with any partner near or far away you can describe it with the gravity theory basically the larger the partner and the larger you are the more you trade the nearer the partner the more you trade and the farther away the less you trade obviously so if you as a UK lose a partner that is very near to you and is very big you are just unable to substitute for that with any partner that is small and far away so Theresa Mayn can dance as much as she wants she won't really solve this problem that she cannot defy gravity thank you very much, good afternoon I'm sure this is the graveyard slot as they say the last speaker of the day it's been fast, actually the good thing about becoming last is it's been a fascinating afternoon listening to the speakers if somewhat a bit depressing to finish up a Friday afternoon with the realisation that actually I don't think businesses in general are as well informed about the issues as the people in this room and I think from a Scottish perspective the landscape doesn't help particularly 99% of businesses in Scotland are SME so you know I think they are definitely unprepared for what's coming down the road but I'm delighted to join the conversation and offer a bit of a business perspective I think that so far we've focused on the political issues and the process of us exiting the EU but I think it's the great uncertainty that's following and how this is going to impact the economy at the forefront of what businesses are grappling with at the moment for business it's all about the economy particularly trade and labour because without this there is no economy and yet the dichotomy is that Brexit has never been about the economy it's always been about sovereignty communities and emotion we've been talking to a number of pollsters who are continually testing the temperature of businesses and citizens who decided to leave and whilst they say do you realise that you will be paying higher taxes that you will have less money in your pocket that there may be less public services that money put into the pension pots could be less you're going to have a much harder time over the next 5 to 10 years and they go yes we understand that we would still vote the same and I think that's the challenge we've got trade and labour perspective what is in place now works very well and it's hard to see how anything else can come close to what we have but I think businesses believe that they're resilient and I think the promise is that there are limitless opportunities ahead I think businesses feel that they will overcome and that they will make the best of what they have to do it's interesting immediately post Brexit we set up a business Brexit group and I think there was a sort of mild panic in the business community at the time and we kind of gleaned that the top 5 issues were access to a single market access to migrant workers regulatory stability concern about continued EU funding and a stable tax regime about a year later we disbanded the group because of sheer boredom of the discussion and there was actually nothing to discuss but what did transpire in that 12 months was that actually the focus had turned to social cohesion and the concern about uncertainty and I think uncertainty has been the mantra of business ever since so I'm just going to give you a little bit of the Scottish dynamics going on timing is really good because British chains of commerce conducted a Brexit survey over the summer so about two and a half thousand businesses responded to a number of questions on Brexit about 250 of those were from Scotland and so we've been able to cut it from a Scottish perspective so hot off the press I'll be able to share with you the response to that survey and then I'll kind of just sum up where I think business is right now so I think as Alexandra said the vast majority of Scots voted to remain and as John said we are stuck with it and we will be exiting the EU with the rest of the UK whether we like it or not the Scottish First Minister has called for delays and exits in the EU if there's a no deal and whilst this does create constitutional tension it is supported by the vast majority of Scottish businesses and I think uncertainty is the enemy here Scotland has a significantly higher proportion of fisheries and farming and has had more use of EU structural funds so they need a lot more clarity on how this is going to be managed going forward migration as we heard from Eve I think migration is probably the biggest concern and actually for me now having listened to Eve speak this afternoon I think there's a job to be done we are heavily reliant on migrant workers in Scotland tourism, education, agriculture fisheries these are all sectors that are heavily reliant on migrant workers in fact speaking to someone in the hotel sector recently saying as much as 70-80% of their workforce are filled by male and European workers and actually I personally feel sad that in an age of working towards an inclusive economy we are defining citizens values to our communities by defining them in terms of high skill and low skill that the monetary contribution to society is how they are being judged deeming people only fit to be part of British society if they earn a particular level of income not where I thought we'd be in 21st century Britain I have to say and also I think freedom of movement is two-way traffic how our business is going to move people into transfer into new jobs particularly global companies who want to move them into European headquarters, how our business travellers going to be disrupted by this so I think there's a huge amount of issues to deal with we also need to trade as a country we need to trade and trade internationally to support our economy we have a huge productivity challenge and fewer businesses with a global mindset and the two complement each other well I think businesses who trade internationally tend to be more productive so we need to make international trade easier with fewer not greater barriers and cost and Scotland actually is world leading in data driven innovation Edinburgh's top three in the world for data driven innovation Edinburgh's set itself the ambition of being the data capital of Europe it's committed to developing 100,000 digitally skilled people and for the Scottish economy over the next five years and that particularly around developing sectors like fintech has huge opportunity for the Scottish economy and yet there's so much uncertainty around the transfer of data across jurisdictions and how do we continue to attract investment we'll have a skilled pool of digitally skilled people and yet we won't be able to attract the investment in to take advantage of that and if we kind of just reflect on this Brexit survey as I say 2,500 respondents about half import export will consider themselves part of an international supply chain key findings uncertainty over Brexit is the most prevalent factor when considering import export decisions at 53% of businesses this is larger than their concern over exchange rate volatility or even their own financial position 40% of the sample are engaging with direct trade with Ireland but over half of these have not taken any preparatory action with regard to potential customs or border issues about 10% of businesses are considering their current supply arrangements most significantly over 2 thirds of firms have not yet engaged in any risk assessment or preparatory planning on Brexit which kind of makes me concerned that there's a big pile of problems coming down the highway about a fifth of businesses reported to change in the number of EU workers that they employ but interestingly the majority of businesses are not expressing any impact on their businesses in the past 12 months in the change of EU workers 94% reported a drop in the number of EU workers that they're employing which is even more concerning in light of the continued skill shortages and the government's plan to significantly cut back low skilled migrant workers from the EU and the rest of the world concerned for the wider economy in the result of a no Brexit deal would see 82% of businesses looking to cut recruitment and investment but a status quo transition period results in businesses saying they're less likely to change their existing plans if a deal can't be reached in the time frame most businesses believe that the UK should look to extend the article 50 period and conduct further negotiations interestingly though a substantial minority 20% would prefer the government to move forward with no deal and regardless of the final outcome the majority of the sample believe that trade with the EU should be the government's focus in the medium term with 25% believing that trade with countries outside the EU should be the priority so I guess just summing up I've certainly got huge concerns having listened to the discussion today and certainty around Brexit as the key driver affecting import-export decisions lack of preparatory and contingency planning is a real issue and I do at BCC have produced a risk register which we are working through with businesses I think there's one I think out of the 24 issues on the register there's one green which is I think VAT so I think there's a lot of work to be done a no deal option will have a substantive impact on recruitment and investment plans across Scotland mostly in a negative direction businesses are telling us that a status quo transition would be more positive outcome and would provide little disruption and if a deal can't be reached as they say they would much prefer to extend negotiations I think overall the results are broadly in line with the rest of the UK but our lack of contingency planning in Scotland is about 5% higher than the rest of the UK 67% in Scotland 62% in the rest of the UK so I would say uncertainty and a bit of inertia would be a description of where we are overall but as you kind of mentioned earlier it's hard to say where we might be if we haven't had this hanging over our heads for the last two years but as always I think businesses are resilient and I think that they will make the best of it thank you ok we've time for a few questions and let's get that one on hand up here at the left back just here thank you thanks very much to all of them again I'm sorry to say John I'm the person who mentioned that there wouldn't be an argument I have to say I found your analysis interesting but I would go a little bit further and say that business hasn't just been late it hasn't been at the table at all it's been delinquent in putting forward arguments against Brexit within three weeks of the referendum in 2016 Nissan came out and said they would continue to employ everybody and some of it I mean how can you explain that I'm also concerned that rejecting as we did very summarily on the EU side the checkers proposals inadequate and all as they may have been we have actually given ammunition to that Tory tough Jacob Rhys Mawg and his cohort of extreme Brexiteers and weakening the government in London does not help find a solution to Brexit John do you want to take that two of you take that let's take a couple of questions here thank you very much gentlemen from an aviation industry point of view we're almost at crisis point already talking about the lead in time and this is one of the few occasions that I agree with can you speak up a little bit Thomas not carrying there's one of the few occasions Michael Larry but one of the things that strikes me about the UK business sector from my own context is that both the remainers and the Brexiteers have a firm belief in British exceptionalism and that therefore that the EU will have to reach an agreement and I guarantee you that the 62% who have contingency plans those contingency plans with possibly 5% of them will actually be serious most of them won't even begin to address the consequences of a a crash out Brexit can we take those two points do you want to start John? I might take the introductory point about business I have to agree for businesses who didn't speak out I hold no torch for them we spoke on the day after the referendum here and shortly after that we commissioned a massive piece of work with businesses here in the UK and we developed answers to that question onto the form of my colleague Katie Dahans publication big principles for a strong Brexit relationship going forward and we've trailed that all around Westminster Dublin for sure and Brussels and it is emerging as shall we say, the proposition closest to what might succeed so I won't worry with the detail it's a customs arrangement services and all the accoutiments that a proper customs solution is going to require businesses are on preparation business people, particularly SMEs and Liz is quite right the majority of firms are small firms and the majority of small firms are optimists because they have to be there wouldn't be in business in the first place there are so many risks that they have to take every day and their optimism includes saying it will be alright on the night even if it won't and their pragmatism says tell me what I need to know when you know what I need to know and you can't tell me that today and I've only got two and six in the bank and I can't go around spending my finite resources on a lot of different plans that might never come to fruition and most of them are so small that they're a better place than mid-scale businesses, global businesses have the resources mid-scale Irish and British firms that trade substantially are too big to turn on a dime and too small to have the resources for all the outcomes and they're the worry space right now I just wonder whether business might not have spoken out very loudly in the UK but just from as an outsider looking at the movement of Theresa May putting checkers on the table and moving towards now and towards customs union is a clear indication from me that obviously they had been intensive talks with business behind the scenes behind closed doors otherwise she wouldn't have moved in this direction I'm going to your point about the aviation industry I think that open skies big concern was that the aviation authority rounded recently and I think the view that there's going to be a cut-and-place job of all the bilateral agreements and that didn't just be done I think there's a realisation that there's a lot of technical detail in these and getting it done in the time frame could well be a challenge but there's a small technicality that's forgotten or a mistake that's made so I think that a little bit more pressure has been stepped up a bit point on that bilateral I couldn't believe that the British Government came out I couldn't believe that the British Government came out saying that they would do bilateral deals you can't do a bilateral deal with the EU it's nonsense Alan Jokes here that's the point about the rebuttal of checkers I didn't see it as quite that in a barely reported comment Mr Barney said three days after so he let the white paper settle for three days and then he said on the Friday we welcome at least something which it was and he said if the UK can show flexibility the EU will as well and in the subsequent weeks we saw what that looked like it was the checks and controls on the British mainland into Northern Ireland and possibly further and really at a level that was quite accommodating it didn't survive but it showed a flexibility that I didn't expect to see Alan Jokes here Alan Jokes the Brexit argument the pro-Brexit argument is about getting back control and partly about getting out from under what are seen to be overly constraining EU regulations the pro-Brexit people have recently been talking about okay we can join the WTO which incidentally they don't say is another organisation that has externally decided rules the one thing that has puzzled me throughout this whole argument about British industry is how nobody has come up with any coherent expression of why it might be in British industry's interests to depart from European regulations I made this point in Beijing last year asking what might be the reason for UK industry to want to depart from these regulations and I gave the example of Rose Royce which successfully makes aero engines that conform to all international standards there's absolutely no interest for that company in departing from externally applied rules and standards they're successful because they're good at adhering to those why is nobody in British industry ever saying making that point the reason these regulations are there are to facilitate trade not to suppress it I think it gave me a very good point on and we'll get the three of you to come in on that one because I think it's a really striking point and a personal view on it myself I'll come back to it Jim Nugent for me I have a question for Jurgen in terms of his statement about the German UK trading and the sensitivity of models you reckon that the estimates were undercooked I'm just a bit concerned what struck me is that the Department of Finance's recent study that used Copenhagen economics as their provider for the estimates of Brexit related shortfalls in trade et cetera would you share similar concerns about the estimates for the effects of Brexit Copenhagen schools computer-generally-glybrian models which have been used by Ireland to look at the trade effects they're similarly underestimating the effects of Brexit we're called underestimating rather than undercooked given what cooking the books normally sounds like Jurgen, do you want to start into that and then we'll come back to the other two I don't know this particular study but if it uses normal models as the Copenhagen economics model usually does and if they don't add anything around that it would or criticism would apply as well to that as well to the model of LSE and Felbermeyer and all the others economists are just unable to include all the positive effects I think another way of saying it they're generally minimum estimates because they're not dynamic they're more static models based on data over a period of time and that doesn't really map out so you have to see them as a minimum basically when you look at free trade agreements and you have ex-post ex-antist estimations of trade effects they are much smaller than ex-post when you look at the data this is another indication for us that they are severe on the estimation on the rules and regulation standards issue I think they must there is a very strong interest an interest on both sides of the channel and obviously on the Irish Sea to keep the same product standards so basically what checkers puts into the window because this is basically to avoid to make it clear to everybody it's important not to have the same thing as we have with the U.S. and what we want to teach it to get rid of then you buy a fobygolf a fobygolf in Botsburg and if it's to be exported to the U.S. you have to open it up again and then introduce other mirrors and whatever so it occurs a lot of costs and then you have to test it twice and again a lot of costs if you have the same standards on both sides saying your regulations you only have one product sold in both markets and only one test and this is what is essentially and I think in my view the EU could be a bit more open to this approach I think the EU has we've all taken a bit for granted what the single market brought which was this commonality of standards which reduces production costs which streamlines things medium size enterprises who are engaged in value chains the small ones sometimes are not as much but the medium ones gain because they can't run multiple product lines which they have to do if they want to export it to different markets John do you want to come back to that? On the data point first of all Mark Kearney was with us a couple of weeks back and he said that on average the gap in real wages is at a manageable level in the UK therefore the consumer is fine if your head is in the fire the problem is that there are extremities and outside London and in some parts of England and the regions actually there are extremes of poverty emerging now because real wages are falling deeply behind and if you talk to food retailers they'll tell you exactly who's spending what and it's not good on the piece about rulemaking global businesses, motor manufacturers, aviation big pharma, they like rules that are the same small businesses their perspective is totally different I spoke to a fishmonger last week a very good fishmonger he sells smoked salmon in a transparent plastic pouch and he was told he has to change the label to add on a new sticker that says contains fish and that's the ministry of silly rules the problem is he didn't realise that that's a locally made rule in England it's not actually what the EU asked him to do so those are the complications of the message The press that got into that that all these nasty rules all came from one place I think the issue as well we definitely need that kind of common regulation because how do we legislate for products that are tested in the UK will they be accepted in the EU and what do we do about dispute resolution as well so I think that these are issues that have not been addressed whatsoever and I think going back to that the rules of silliness whiskey and salmon biggest export in the UK not just Scotland something like six bottles of whiskey per second is exported from Scotland and when you're negotiating free trade agreements you've got issues around maturation periods and all kinds of issues so it's absolutely critical that we have that I want to wrap this up and just make a couple of general points one of the things that has come out I think which we all know but it's interesting how it's like with this Brexit thing you can realise something some other bit of the jigsaw edge bit of the jigsaw sort of fits into place this was a kind of political social decision with enormous economic implications and I suppose that's what this final session is just teasing out what some of those economic implications were even though they came up under the other sessions later and I think that certainly I think this struck me in the debate as it was ahead of Brexit because I couldn't believe this could possibly happen I would have lost money if I was a betting woman but I'm not so I didn't but what struck me was that Irish industry knows the language of politics partly because of the history of the last 30 or 40 years so when they always talk about a change or an effect they immediately move to jobs that's not been the British way the British ways we talk about are export sales are global performance are this, this, that and the other so by getting it into jobs we have a connection here immediately with it so they just, if you say it's going to reduce my export sales by 10% first of all do I understand what 10% means second what's an export sale I don't really think in those terms so in terms of the connectedness between business and Europe and politics I think Ireland because for lots of reasons and in fact in many of our past referendums we've had business out there very actively doing it but business already had that language and as an economist I'd say well actually they're out there making exports they're creating jobs but the reality is if you're trying to join up the society and the politics and the economics jobs is the absolutely crucial thing jobs and wages and of course what you're having in the UK now is declines in real wages because prices have risen and I think it's an interesting piece that I think the probably effect created at the time was as soon as Brexit happened Armageddon, Armageddon, the dreaded Armageddon what happened the following day and of course for those who wanted to leave we discovered the following day they hadn't actually left and for others what was projected as the problems it goes to me much longer term and it seems to me there's a danger that I think you talked John about the short and the long term in the short term because people are spending money to actually deal with Brexit that gives a boost to growth it gives certain kinds of investment it otherwise... no they're borrowing money but so there's an investment going on and that can actually mean that the longer term growth is actually more depressed there's a shorter term and there's an evaluation effect on that there's another kind of effect that's probably very short term somebody said to me recently which I think bears worth repeating the UK left on an emotional basis it wasn't anyway rational as we know the rational fact the figures and the facts weren't out there it was a thing about sovereignty forgetting that in a globalised world sovereignty has evolved and changed in what it is they left this emotional thing we have lost our sovereignty we've lost our control this person who's an economic psychologist said to me if you make a decision on an emotional basis you won't remake a decision on a rational basis so what that means is that the only way to change the emotional decision if you were ever to change it is that you can translate the rational evidence into a new narrative which has emotional appeal so even though all of the data that came out after the event came out and should have thought as an economist a rational economist I'd have thought this would have made a big change of course it didn't because unless you could get the whole thing reworked into a new emotional narrative it's not going to have that effect anyway I've had my little spiel at the end of the afternoon so I'm going to let you all home and thank the speakers for a fantastic afternoon thank the IIEA people who are involved in organising this particularly Andrew wherever you are in the room but it was a fantastic afternoon an event well worth having and I think having the German perspective along with the Scottish and the Irish one just gave that a unique flavour to see exactly where the three large pieces fit together Scotland and Ireland are the small countries Germany and the UK are the big countries so we small and big countries have to sort of work together ok thank you very much everybody