Part of 2. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:57 pm on 19 October 2016.
Can the Cabinet Secretary confirm that there is no official Treasury forecast of a £66 billion deficit from Brexit, and that this figure came from one briefing paper amongst many by one anonymous Treasury civil servant, and may well have been written in order to be leaked in the first place? The £66 billion shortfall in tax revenue, which is what it referred to, would imply a 9.5 per cent collapse in our national income. This is clearly preposterous given that, even if we have no deal with the EU arising out of these Brexit negotiations, 75 per cent of the traded goods and services of the EU have a zero tariff in any event.