In response, the basic rate of income tax would be raised, inheritance tax would be hiked, and the budget for services including the National Health Service (NHS) would be cut, he said.
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The BBC and The Times report that the Chancellor would cut spending and consider increases to income tax and fuel duty to counter the effects of a so-called Brexit – a British exit from Europe.
Spending on the NHS, schools and defence may also be reduced by two per cent, with £2 billion chopped off pensions and a further £15 billion of cuts to services such as transport, police and local government.
The Chancellor is saying the emergency Budget figures are based on mid-range forecasts by the Institute for Fiscal Studies of the likely economic impact of Brexit, but pro-Leave Tories insist they would vote against such measures. The group, including high-profile Leave campaigners Iain Duncan Smith and Liam Fox, said in a joint statement: “It is absurd to say that if people vote to take back control from the European Union that he would want to punish them in this way”.
They included: “If he were to go with these suggestions, the chancellor’s position would become untenable”.
Asked how he would get the plan through Parliament he said: “I’m pointing out the kind of measures we’d have to take are ones that any Chancellor and any government would have to take”.
He was due to give a speech later alongside his predecessor as finance minister, Labour’s Alistair Darling, who was in post during Britain’s descent into the financial crisis in 2008.
It would mean house prices are £20,000 lower by 2018 than if the United Kingdom votes to Remain, assuming that prices would otherwise have grown in line with the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecasts.
They share the following powerful chart showing the apparent tipping point in momentum for the Leave campaign.
Almost 60 members of the British Parliament have vowed to block Chancellor of Exchequer George Osborne’s “punishment budget”, which he proposed to counter the negative effects of a possible vote to leave the European Union (EU).
On Tuesday, rivals from the remain and leave camps clashed in a debate live-streamed on YouTube.
Darling’s Labour Party, the U.K.’s main opposition, has already said a Brexit vote could lead to more government belt-tightening by the ruling Conservatives.
Tory MP Steve Baker added: “I am shocked that the Chancellor is threatening to break so many key manifesto pledges on which all Conservative MPs were elected”.
“I am even more anxious now than I was in 2008”, Mr.
In a joint statement issued by Vote Leave, 57 Conservatives, including Mr Osborne’s former Cabinet colleagues Iain Duncan Smith, Liam Fox, Cheryl Gillan, David Jones and Owen Paterson, said it was “incredible” that the Chancellor was “threatening to renege on so many manifesto pledges”.
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This called for informal talks with EU countries ahead of a formal negotiation for a new EU-Britain treaty and immediate legislation to make emergency provisions for the transition period.
