Treasury doing 'significant' amount of planning for Brexit vote

The Chancellor has admitted for the first time that the Treasury are doing "quite a significant amount of contingency planning" to "mitigate" the potential impact of Brexit on financial stability.

Earlier this week Downing Street denied they were making these kinds of preparations on Monday.

Speaking to the Commons treasury select committe on EU membership this afternoon, he said leaving the EU "would make the country poorer and it would make individuals in the country poorer".

He added that he was fustrayed that "equal airtime" is given to competing economic analysis documents, given that the "weight of opinion" is for the remain campaign.

Andrew Tyrie, the Committee's Chairman, told Mr Osborne that the In camp had produced "a raft of claims which, taken together, can look like hyperbole and over-egging the pudding".

However, Mr Osborne said he "completely rejected" the suggestion that warnings had been overcooked, pointing out that predictions of the economic consequences of Brexit had been backed by the Bank of England, OECD and IMF.