IT IS FEARED that the UK could see 100,000 job losses in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

As talks between the EU and the UK Government continue, Pete Moran of Cumbria Law Centre fears that the state of paid work is “very precarious.”

Failure to achieve an affective trade deal with the EU before the UK’s transition period ends could exacerbate an already difficult situation, he said.

Mr Moran said: “We look quite carefully at what the predictions are around the effects of Brexit because we need to understand them for how we fund out services.

“The predictions we’ve seen are all very serious.”

Even if the UK achieves a trade deal with the EU before leaving the union, Mr Moran fears that there could still be a significant impact on jobs in the UK.

“We expect that there will be two effects. One will be the difficulties for companies who will see the narrow margins that they work on eroded by things like tariffs.”

He added that the second was that businesses in need of accessibility to the EU would suffer.

“We know that British manufacturing has to work incredibly hard to compete with goods for other nations already but I think if we move into a situation where there are tariffs on manufactured goods moving around that will hit businesses very hard.”

Companies could struggle for staffing. Mr Moran said: “We’ve seen that many have benefited from the availability of good workers from other European countries that will also get more difficult going forward.”

Carlisle based Cumbria Law Centre has already seen a surge in demand during the pandemic, which could be set to increase.

Mr Moran said: “For us, what we know is that big shocks in the economy always bring people to us needing help with housing, debt and employment.

“We’ve had one major shock this year and that goes on. When you start to layer economic shocks on top of each other that proves too much for a lot of businesses.”

“In the short term we have no doubt whatsoever that the effect will be negative.”