express– Patrick Minford, Brexit-backing Professor from Cardiff University, noted the importance of a well-ordered vaccine drive away from the EU. He said: “The bounce back is largely due to the vaccination success and yes, this was connected to being outside the EU so the Government could move fast, without worrying about EU state aid rules, and using our own medical regulator.”
Outside of the EU and with it the European Medicines Agency, the UK was able to push ahead with approving doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
By the time 40 percent of Britons had been jabbed, the number of those who had received their first vaccination in the EU was stuck at around 12 percent.
Just last week official figures found the UK had recorded a 4.8 percent growth in GDP in the second financial quarter.
According to the Office for National Statistics, this was a much more profound bounce back than those experienced in France, Germany and Spain.
But the Iron Lady’s ex-adviser also explained in a recent academic report that the UK could be looking forward to even more economic growth in the future.
Prof Minford said: “This updates the forecast for the latest numbers and shows we are on course for 8 percent growth in 2021 and another eight percent in 2022.”
In the Liverpool Investment Letter, the former Economists for Brexit member expressed a desire for the UK to “pursue a bold tax cutting strategy for growth and levelling up”.
The fellow at the Centre for Brexit Policy told Express.co.uk: “The Letter also highlights the need for a positive programme of tax cuts, reformed regulation and spending to support and boost growth.
“This extra growth will more than pay off the short term rise in debt.”
In the report, the Cardiff-based academic went further by claiming: “These growth-supporting policies involve supply-side tax cuts and spending rises whose short-term effect is of course to increase the deficit.
“But in the long run they bring the debt ratio down, so in effect paying for themselves”.
The letter recommended: “For the long term good of our country fiscal policy should now focus on boosting growth, particularly in the ‘Northern’ regions outside the relatively prosperous South.”
“What we have found”, the 78-year-old claimed, “is that a bold package of tax cuts and targeted spending on infrastructure will boost growth across the country, but particularly in the North, reducing the North-South gap, and will also pay for itself through its long-term effect on the public finances.”
The study estimates growth in the North could double that of the South if these low-tax policies are enacted by the British Government.
However, Prof Minford’s report also issued a rallying cry for fellow proponents of supply-side economic policies.
“To embark on this strategy”, he claimed, “the main need is to close our ears to the voices of gloom that urge the need to raise taxes and cut spending to reduce the Covid debt — that way lies only a downward spiral of falling growth and a rising debt ratio — a ‘doom loop’ of stagnation, austerity and worsening finances.”
When considering the economic benefits Britain could yield from signing its own free trade agreements outside of the EU’s customs union, the 78-year-old told Express.co.uk: “After the Australia deal, deals with the US and the Pacific Trade agreement countries can deliver big gains to UK GDP, of seven percent or more over the long term.”
The UK has already rolled over EU trading arrangements with more than 60 nations.
Britain also signed its first bespoke post-Brexit trading accord in October 2020 when Tokyo agreed to sign a far-reaching Anglo-Japanese deal that went far beyond what had been offered to the Brussels bloc.
