Tuesday, September 08, 2026
Billions lost to Brexit could save NHS
The Independent reports that a leading economist has warned that the billions that the UK has lost to Brexit could wipe out NHS waiting lists and create a world-class service if recouped.
The paper says that Nick Bloom, a professor at Stanford University, said up to 8 per cent of GDP was wiped off the UK economy by leaving Europe, through lost trade, increased red tape and delays in pushing the Brexit deal through. That is close to the 9.7 per cent spent on health before the Covid pandemic, which he said could be used to bolster the overrun and struggling health service:
He said infamous claims made by the Leave campaign that Brexit could free up £350m a week to spend on the NHS, in a controversial slogan emblazoned across the side of a battle bus, were “exactly and perfectly wrong”.
Prof Bloom urged the UK government to forge closer ties to the bloc in a bid to limit the damage further and claw some of the losses back.
He said: “So we've lost six to 8 per cent [because of Brexit]. Imagine getting that back and spending all that money we lost on the NHS. Suddenly, you would go from the current NHS to one that would be amazing.
“Budgets would go up by about two-thirds; probably, waiting lists would disappear. Hospitals would be refurbished, you'd have better-paid doctors, better-paid nurses, better equipment… So one way to look at it is all the money we’ve lost. If we hadn’t lost it, we could have spent it on the NHS. We’d have a world-class national health service.”
Prof Bloom, who was speaking to The Independent as part of its Europe: The Way Back campaign, which is calling for the UK to rebuild its relationship with Europe, is the co-author of research that shows Brexit caused the economy to shrink between 6 to 8 per cent – more than previously thought.
He said the figure “is an enormous amount”, adding: “It’s something like £3,000 a year, per typical British person, that we've lost.”
He said roughly half was lost because “Brexit itself was just bad news, because it makes it harder for British firms to trade with Europe, and Europe’s about half of our trade pre-Brexit”, while the other half was due to the “mess” of approving the final deal.
“So the vote happened in 2016, but it took several years of back and forwards, and multiple prime ministers, and votes, and re-votes, and haggles, negotiations. And so businesses over this period were left uncertain and paused on investment, paused on hiring, and finally we have Brexit done,” he said.
It is no surprise that Bloom claims that one of the biggest threats to putting things right by getting closer to the EU is Reform leader Nigel Farage –for decades the main driver behind getting the UK out of the EU – who remains a “spectre” still impeding the UK’s economic recovery.
The government need to ignore those who got us into this mess in the first place and try and put things right.
