LONDON: A business group backed by the bosses of some of Britain’s biggest companies has thrown its weight behind Tony Blair’s warning about the effects of a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union.
Business for New Europe (BNE) said a vote to quit the EU could force some companies that use Britain as a European base to leave the UK. The group warned that businesses will hold back on investment in Britain because of the uncertainty created by the prospect of the referendum.
Business leaders on BNE’s advisory council include Sir Michael Rake, the chairman of BT, Chris Gibson-Smith, the chairman of the London Stock Exchange, and Sir Philip Hampton, the chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland. BNE is non-partisan and campaigns for Britain to stay in a less bureaucratic EU.
Blair said in a speech on Tuesday that the prospect of Britain leaving the EU would cast a “pall of unpredictability” over the economy, threatening jobs and investment. He warned that a vote to quit the EU would cause the worst instability and anxiety for business since the second world war.
David Cameron has promised to call a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU by 2017 if the Conservatives form a government after next month’s election. He has pledged to renegotiate the terms of the UK’s membership before the referendum.
Sir Nigel Sheinwald, a non-executive director of Royal Dutch Shell who sits on the advisory council, said: “I agree with the sentiment [of Blair’s speech]. The first issue is uncertainty between the election, if the Conservatives win, and the referendum. In that period, companies thinking of major investment in the UK which depend on Britain’s membership of the EU will delay or go somewhere else. [If there is a vote to leave], there would be a period of renegotiation in which everything would be uncertain for years until we got a new status. Britain’s exit from the European Union would be a huge business and political risk and I think a lot of companies realise that.”
