Osborne and Darling warn of £15bn post-Brexit tax hike
Geroge Osborne and Alistair Darling will today warn that the Treasury would be forced to unveil an emergency Budget to fill £30bn black hole if UK votes to leave EU
ANY future government would have to fill a £30bn financial black hole with tax hikes and spending cuts if the UK votes to leave the European Union, chancellor George Osborne will warn.
Osborne and Labour former chancellor Alistair Darling will today warn that the Treasury would be forced to unveil an emergency Budget that will include £15bn of tax rises and £15bn of spending cuts in the case of a vote for Brexit.
Darling, who is speaking on the outcome of the EU Referendum at the CFO Agenda on 28 June, will claim he is more worried about Britain’s finances if we exit the EU than he was at the time of the financial crash in 2008 when he chancellor.
Osborne is expected to outline tax rises comprising a 2% increase in the basic rate of income tax, a three pence rise to the higher rate, and a five pence rise to the inheritance tax rate.
Osborne and Darling will say the measures are based on the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ predictions about the economic impact of a vote to leave from lower trade, investment, and tax receipts.
“We know all too well what happens when Britain loses control of its public finances. We’re agreed that a vote to leave risks doing the same thing to Britain all over again,” they wrote in The Times.
Darling will say: Darling will say: “The Leave campaign has no idea, no plan whatsoever. Any political party seeking election on such a flimsy and fraudulent prospectus would have been torn to pieces by now.
“We know we’ll have not just a short period of uncertainty – but years and years of it. Far from having more to spend on public services – the giant con trick at the heart of the Leave campaign – we’d have tens of billions of pounds less.”