LONDON (Reuters) - Chancellor George Osborne said on Monday that the public finances would suffer as a result of the vote to leave the European Union, but that new fiscal measures would not be proposed until a new prime minister was in place in the autumn.
Osborne had warned before the June 23 vote that the country would need an emergency budget and risked a complete loss of confidence in its public finances if it voted to leave the EU, drawing criticism from Leave campaigners.
But in his first public statement since the referendum, he said any new tax and spending measures could now wait until after a new leader of the Conservative Party was selected - likely in October - following Prime Minister David Cameron's announcement on Friday he would resign.
"There will have to be action to deal with the impact on the public finances, but of course it's perfectly sensible to wait until we have a new prime minister to determine what that will look like," he told reporters in a news conference at Britain's finance ministry.