Vote leave bus
Boris Johnson, Gisela Stuart and Douglas Carswell address the people of Stafford in Market Square during the Vote Leave Brexit Battle Bus campaign Getty

A promise to slash food prices by leaving the EU was dropped by the official Brexit campaign because of voters' skepticism, Dan Hannan revealed last night (4 October). The Conservative MEP said Vote Leave's focus group results showed the public did not trust the politicians making the claim.

But Hannan said he expected food prices to fall by up to £900 per year for families after the UK split from the EU. "I think our farmers, who have always been traditionally more innovative and more open to technology than the EU, will thrive and will get new markets overseas outside the EU," he added.

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The Eurosceptic was addressing the Brexit Central fringe event during the Conservative conference in Birmingham, alongside former Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers and ex-British Chambers of Commerce chief John Longworth.

Longworth spoke to IBTimes UK after the event, where he urged British business not to worry about the UK leaving the EU's single-market, as fears over a so called "hard Brexit" grow.

"We should not fear the single-market issue because the benefits of freeing ourselves of the regulatory burden and the value that will create, which is effectively a tax cut for business," he said.

The pound, meanwhile, has fallen to a 31-year-low this morning after Theresa May announced she would trigger Article 50 – the mechanism to split from the EU – by March 2017.

Her government will also scrap the 1972 European Communities Act (ECA), while introducing a Great Repeal Bill. The legislation will enshrine all EU law into UK law.

Brexit Secretary David Davis has promised to bring immigration numbers "down" and May re-confirmed that she will stick with David Cameron's "tens of thousands" net migration target.

The move suggests the government will not seek single-market access since doing so would require the UK to sign up to the EU's free movement of peoples rules.

Cabinet minister Damian Green walked off, waving his arms in the air, when IBTimes UK approached him for comment about the state of sterling this morning.

Dan Hannan is an IBTimes UK columnist