The Chancellor says no-one “really knows” how much crashing out of the EU will cost the country – undermining repeated ministerial claims that the damage will be minimal and short-term.
Sajid Javid did not dispute his own watchdog’s warning of a £30bn a year hit, saying: “I’ve never pretended that if you leave without a deal it won’t be challenging.”
And he acknowledged the severe impact on businesses, “especially if you a trader with the EU”.
Speaking ahead of his Conservative conference speech, Mr Javid also condemned a call by a former Tory cabinet minister to publish the government’s Brexit proposals as a “ridiculous suggestion”.
Government debt would rise over the next three years and the budget deficit would widen by around £30bn from 2020-21 onwards, its report said.
Asked if that forecast was “wrong”, Mr Javid – who has refused to publish any further projections – said his focus was on “our mitigation for no deal”.
And he argued all forecasts did not take into account emergency measures to rescue the economy, saying: “No-one really knows, because they couldn’t know, what the economic policy response would be.”
Mr Javid told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “What I’m confident about is, with all those mitigations – whether it is the ports or elsewhere – that we will be able to deal with many of the disruptions around no-deal.”
On whether crashing out of the EU on Halloween is still possible, despite the Benn Act, he said: “Yes, it is. It’s not our preferred outcome, we are working incredibly hard to get a deal by 31 October and I absolutely believe that can still happen.
“But, if we do not manage to do that, we do still need to leave the EU on that date – we cannot have any more dither and delay and we will leave if we have to without a deal on October 31.”