Anticipated impacts of Brexit scenarios on UK food prices and implications for policies on poverty and health: a structured expert judgement approach

Abstract

Introduction: Food insecurity is associated with increased risk for several health conditions and with poor chronic disease management. Key determinants for household food insecurity are income and food costs. Whereas short-term household incomes are likely to remain static, increased food prices would be a significant driver of food insecurity.

Objectives: To investigate food price drivers for household food security and its health consequences in the UK under scenarios of Deal and No-deal for Britain's exit from the European Union. To estimate the 5% and 95% quantiles of the projected price distributions.

Design: Structured expert judgement elicitation, a well-established method for quantifying uncertainty, using experts. In July 2018, each expert estimated the median, 5% and 95% quantiles of changes in price for 10 food categories under Brexit Deal and No-deal to June 2020 assuming Brexit had taken place on 29 March 2019. These were aggregated based on the accuracy and informativeness of the experts on calibration questions.

Participants: Ten specialists with expertise in food procurement, retail, agriculture, economics, statistics and household food security.

Results: When combined in proportions used to calculate Consumer Price Index food basket costs, median food price change for Brexit with a Deal is expected to be +6.1% (90% credible interval -3% to +17%) and with No-deal +22.5% (90% credible interval +1% to +52%).

Conclusions: The number of households experiencing food insecurity and its severity is likely to increase because of expected sizeable increases in median food prices after Brexit. Higher increases are more likely than lower rises and towards the upper limits, these would entail severe impacts. Research showing a low food budget leads to increasingly poor diet suggests that demand for health services in both the short and longer terms is likely to increase due to the effects of food insecurity on the incidence and management of diet-sensitive conditions.

Keywords: Brexit; Consumer Price Index; food prices; structured expert judgement; uncertainty.