Housing minister Rachel Maclean has been ridiculed by a TV show audience over her claim that Brexit has no part in the UK’s poor economic performance.

Maclean – appearing on last evening’s BBC Question Time – blamed other factors when asked why Britain was in danger of falling into a recession and was performing less well than most other western economies.

Maclean – who will introduce the Renters Reform Bill into the Commons later this year – said: “The government recognises that times are tough. We’ve had a global pandemic. We’ve had Putin’s illegal and brutal war in Ukraine and these factors have impacted our economy.”

At that point another panellist – Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran – intervened and said “Brexit”.

Maclean then dismissed the point saying: “No, it’s nothing to do with Brexit” only for the audience to laugh, with one heckling: “Yes it is.”

Maclean continued: “Well, I don’t really think it’s the right time to be re-running a referendum that we had many years ago where the country voted to leave the European Union.”

Earlier this week the International Monetary Fund suggested the UK’s economy would perform the worst out of all G20 economies apart from Russia this year and next; and also this week Gerry Murphy, the chairman of Burberry, said at a conference attended by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that leaving the EU had been a “drag on growth” for the UK economy.