BRITAIN would be plunged into a yearlong “DIY recession” if it voted to leave the European Union, new Treasury analysis launched by David Cameron and George Osborne today will show.
In its starkest warning yet, the Treasury will say that leaving the EU would cut growth by at least 3.6 per cent.
At a business on the south coast, the Chancellor is expected to say: “It’s only been eight years since Britain entered the deepest recession our country has seen since the Second World War. Every part of our country suffered. The British people have worked so hard to get our country back on track. Do we want to throw it all away?
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“With exactly one month to go to the referendum, the British people must ask themselves this question: can we knowingly vote for a recession? Does Britain really want this DIY recession?”
The latest warning of an economic slump follows a claim from Mr Osborne last week that Brexit could cause property prices across the UK to fall by up to 18 per cent and mortgage rates to rise, making it even harder for first-time buyers to get on the property ladder. An earlier warning said leaving the EU could result in households losing £4,300 a year.
In response, leading Leave campaigner Iain Duncan Smith, the former Work and Pensions secretary, claimed no one would believe the Chancellor’s ”economic forecasts of doom”.
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“As George Osborne has himself admitted, the reason he created the independent forecaster, the OBR, was because by 2010 the public simply did not believe the Government’s own economic forecasts. The Treasury has consistently got its predictions wrong in the past.
“This Treasury document is not an honest assessment but a deeply biased view of the future and it should not be believed by anyone,” declared the Scot.
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He added: ‘It is a fact that we hand over £350 million a week to the EU. If we Vote Leave, we can take back control of that money and use it to help people here in Britain. We will also take back control over our economy creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs as we do trade deals with growing countries in the rest of the world.”
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