Chancellor Philip Hammond was answering questions on government forecasts last week that showed Britain will be worse off in 15 years under any Brexit outcome.
For Chancellor Philip Hammond, ending the social divisions over Brexit matters more than the economic cost of leaving the European Union.
"What would be catastrophic would be to fail to move on, to remain mired in this debate for months or years or longer,” he told Parliament’s Treasury Committee in London Wednesday. "We have to resolve this so we can go back to rolling out the latest technologies, to supporting our business to grow.”
Hammond was answering questions on government forecasts last week that showed Britain will be worse off in 15 years under any Brexit outcome.
While the hit to economic output could be as much as 10.7 percent in the worst-case scenario, the option sought by the U.K. -- maintaining close ties with the EU -- would involve only "very modest” costs, Hammond said.
"If the proposal on the table was a no-deal exit, I would take different view,” he said. But a deal with minimal costs that "avoids large swathes feeling betrayed, but allows all of us to accept, in a rather British way, that we’ve made a compromise solution and we’ve moved on, I judge that even narrowly economically that would be in the best interests of our country.”
But the deep divisions were on display again on Wednesday as the government was forced to publish the previously secret legal advice given to the Cabinet on the deal Prime Minister Theresa May negotiated with the EU. Hated by politicians on both sides of the debate, the deal is expected to fail in a decisive parliamentary vote next week, throwing the final course of Brexit into fresh confusion.
