Leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom | Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP via Getty Images No-deal Brexit could mean ‘minimalist’ withdrawal deal, says UK minister Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the Commons, said a ‘managed no-deal’ didn’t have to mean no agreement.

A "managed no-deal" Brexit would not necessarily mean no withdrawal deal between the U.K. and EU, according to a leading Brexiteer Cabinet minister.

If MPs in the House of Commons do not approve Prime Minister Theresa May's negotiated Brexit deal when it comes to a vote in mid-January, an alternative option would be a "more minimalist" deal including a transition to avoid a legal cliff edge on Brexit day, House of Commons leader Andrea Leadsom told the BBC's Today Program.

Her comments run directly counter to the message from the EU however. On Wednesday, the European Commission laid out in its emergency contingency plans for a no-deal Brexit scenario.

The measures would be "by definition and, by a rule, temporary in time and unilateral in nature," a senior EU official said Wednesday. "This is very much a damage limitation exercise. If we were to come to a no-deal scenario, a hard Brexit, there will be negative consequences. We cannot mitigate all of those by contingency measures." Without a deal, the EU says there will be no transition — or implementation period as the U.K. government prefers to call it.

But Leadsom painted a more optimistic picture of no deal. If parliament votes down the deal, she said, “then we have to look at what the alternatives are — and a managed no-deal, where we collaborate with the EU27, friends and neighbors — would be an alternative solution that the European Union might well find is also in their interests."

“A managed no-deal does not necessarily mean that there is no Withdrawal Agreement at all. What I’m looking at is trying to find an alternative that, in the event we can’t agree to this deal, there could be a further deal which looks at a more minimalist approach that enables us to leave with some kind of deal and implementation period that avoids the cliff edge and uncertainty for businesses and travelers and so on,” she added.

Britain is due to leave the EU in March next year and the EU27 have ruled out re-opening negotiations on the deal.

Highlighting differences among May's senior Cabinet ministers, Leadsom ruled out going back to the people in a second EU referendum to break the impasse among politicians in Westminster.

Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd said late Wednesday that she did not want another referendum, but could see there would be "a plausible argument" for another popular vote if there were no parliamentary consensus on other options.

“A second referendum is not government policy, and would undermine the biggest democratic exercise ever, where we had a clear majority to leave the EU,” Leadsom said.

“To have a second referendum would unfortunately be going back to people and telling them they got it wrong and needed to try again, and that would be unacceptable.”

Rudd tweeted last night: "I don’t want a people’s vote or a referendum in general. Parliament has to reach a majority on how it’s going to leave the European Union."