Britain will be plunged into a year-long recession if it votes to leave the EU, according to a bleak analysis of the short-term economic shock of a Brexit vote to be published on Monday by the Treasury.

David Cameron and George Osborne hope the Treasury warning of an immediate hit to jobs, interest rates and house prices will be the clinching argument for undecided voters as the EU referendum campaign enters its final month.

The Treasury analysis suggests that growth could be 3.6 per cent lower after two years if Britain votes to leave the EU, compared with the forecast for continued growth after a vote to remain. This would produce a recession similar to that of the early 1990s but not as bad as the one that followed the 2008 crash.

Leave campaigners will point to the large margin of error implicit in the Treasury’s economic model, which claims that the economy could be 6 per cent lower than the current forecast under a worst-case scenario.

Iain Duncan Smith said: “The Treasury has consistently got its predictions wrong in the past. This Treasury document is not an honest assessment but a deeply biased view of the future and it should not be believed by anyone.”

The Treasury “short-term shock” paper is its second and final piece of analysis on Brexit before the June 23 EU referendum and is seen by Mr Osborne’s allies as likely to have the most impact on voters.

“With exactly one month to the referendum, the British people must ask themselves this question: can we knowingly vote for a recession?” Mr Osborne will say in a speech on the south coast on Monday. “Does Britain really want this DIY recession?”

The analysis assumes that Britain would become less open to trade and investment outside the EU single market, that there would be an “uncertainty effect” on business and household spending and that Brexit would have a negative effect on financial markets.

With exactly one month to the referendum, the British people must ask themselves this question: can we knowingly vote for a recession?

Last month the Treasury produced a paper on the longer-term impact of a Leave vote which said households could be on average £4,300 a year worse off than they would otherwise have been by 2030.

Although that figure was heavily disputed by the Brexit campaign, it was seen by both sides of the debate to have “cut through” with voters.

Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne are expected on Monday to come up with a specific number of jobs at risk if Britain left the EU, to accompany the Treasury warning that the country would go into recession.

The Financial Times poll of polls puts Remain on 47 per cent and Leave on 40 per cent, suggesting that warnings of serious economic problems from the Treasury, the Bank of England, the International Monetary Fund and others — dubbed Project Fear by Brexiteers — are starting to resonate. Betting markets now put the odds of Britain staying in the EU at about 80 per cent.

That is in spite of the scorn attracted by some of the warnings, notably Mr Osborne’s claim last week that house prices would be as much as 18 per cent lower than they otherwise would have been if Britain leaves the EU.

Prof Sir Charlie Bean, former Bank of England deputy governor, reviewed the Treasury exercise in a consultant capacity and concluded that it was “reasonable” and used “the best possible techniques”.

Mr Cameron jokingly referred to the doom-laden warnings in the House of Commons this month when he said that “a plague of locusts” could descend on the country if it left the EU.