Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

This comes back to what we were discussing previously. A small shock would be difficult but we hope it would be relatively manageable. The Government could still, essentially, allow tax revenues to fall, spending to rise in a cyclical way and the balance to increase. If there was a large and serious shock, however, the Government would likely have to take action to consolidate. It would have to do what was done following 2008 and follow a pro-cyclical policy. That would contribute to the downturn but that action would be required to stabilise the debt ratio again. That is why we have not given explicit advice about what to do in the event of a hard Brexit. It really depends on how severe the shock turns out to be. It could just be a bad problem or it could be a very serious problem. We do not want either of those two scenarios to happen but there is a major difference in the options available in each.