The deputy governor of the Bank of England, Sam Woods, has soothed political nerves and revised forecasts of Brexit job losses downwards.
Giving evidence to the Department for Exiting the EU select committee in parliament on Thursday, Woods said there had been a “downward drift” in the jobs he expected would be lost.
He maintained that 1 to 2% of jobs in insurance and banking would leave London but they were at the lower end of his estimate of between 5000 to 10000 jobs.
He added that around 20% of the job losses would be new jobs “so they are not all jobs moving out of London but most of them will be.”
Woods said a final deal including financial services was unlikely to be in place by October but was “absolutely technically doable”.
Stephen Jones, chief executive of UK Finance, agreed with Wood.
He said: “They may be new jobs created in continental Europe, without necessarily displacing jobs here. But banks need to be efficient and the idea of duplication is unlikely to be sustainable. So I fear eventually we are talking about a loss of jobs.”
The UK is set to leave the European Union at the end of March next year. This will be followed by a 21-month transitional period during which the country will have to follow EU rules but will have no voting rights in decision-making bodies.
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