EU referendum: BoE has responsibility to highlight Brexit risk says Carney

Bank of England (BoE) governor Mark Carney has reiterated the UK central bank had a responsibility to warn investors and policymakers about the risks related to Britain leaving the European Union.

Appearing before lawmakers on the Parliament's Treasury Committee on Tuesday (24 May), the BoE governor said leaving the EU could "materially change the trade-off."

The BoE has "a responsibility under our remit to report not just the current trade-off that may hold in terms of returning inflation to target in a sustainable manner, but the risks, the principle risks around that trade-off," Carney said.

Fellow BoE policymakers Martin Weale, Gertjan Vlieghe and deputy governor Ben Broadbent stressed the sterling could suffer a sharp depreciation and the UK economy could slow down, should Britain vote to leave the 28-country bloc on 23 June.

Carney's comments are likely to draw more criticism from the 'Leave' campaign, which previously accused the BoE governor of taking a political stance on the Brexit debate. Earlier this month Carney claimed that Leave campaigners who insist that departing the EU would have no impact on the economic position of the UK were "in denial".

"Our central forecast is for Remain – we always take government policy, that's the standard approach of the Bank of England – but we go into great detail about the risks around that," he told The Andrew Marr Show on 15 May.

On Monday, former London Mayor, Boris Johnson, accused pro-European campaigners of wheeling out the biggest propaganda exercise in almost 25 years in a bid to win voters.

"I think that they are rattled on the Remain side of the campaign because they are putting out more propaganda than we've at any time since 1992, when they said that we couldn't leave the European Exchange Rate Mechanism – do you remember that?" he said.

"They said it would be a disaster, they said that interest rates would go up, they said it would be an economic catastrophe for this country if we left the European Exchange Rate Mechanism – that's what the Treasury said. And what happened? It was a liberation for this economy".

Johnson's comments came after Prime Minister David Cameron and four former heads of major high street retailers claimed that leaving the European Union (EU) would drive up household bills and risk jobs.