Post-Brexit payments to Brussels are set to top an eye-watering £50billion in a ‘slap in the face’ to taxpayers, it emerged today.
Figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed the UK handed over £3.25billion to Eurocrats last year.
It took the total Britain has paid to the European Union since leaving in 2020 to around £44billion, according to the statistics agency.
And the Government has committed to handing over another £8billion or so under the terms of the exit deal, meaning post-Brexit payments in total are set to surge past £50billion.
The sum far exceeds what previous governments have claimed they were willing to pay to leave the bloc.
Critics today said it was an insult to hard-pressed households who are potentially facing more tax hikes in the Budget in November.
Former Tory Brexit minister David Jones, who has since defected to Reform UK, said: ‘This is nothing less than a slap in the face to all the hard-working Britons who are currently struggling with a cost-of-living crisis.
‘The European Union should no longer be the recipient of funds from this country as far as I’m concerned.
Britain has paid around £44billion to the European Union since leaving in 2020. And the Government has committed to handing over another £8billion or so under the terms of the exit deal
The majority of the settlements relate to the bill for leaving the EU, which Britain agreed to pay under the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement after exiting the bloc in January 2020. Pictured: European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen
‘I think we were so desperate to get out of the EU that at the time we basically came up with a very bad deal.’
Frank Furedi, boss of the MCC Brussels think-tank, said: ‘Our negotiators have been taken for a ride and basically had no idea how to play hardball, which is what you need to do.
‘As far as they were concerned they just wanted an easy life and they didn’t particularly care about the financial consequences of this. As far as the EU Commission is concerned, they’re laughing all the way to the bank because they got a very good financial deal out of this.
‘It’s a tragedy that we’ve let all this money slide out of our hands and handed it over to the EU.’
The majority of the settlements relate to the bill for leaving the EU, which Britain agreed to pay under the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement after exiting the bloc in January 2020.
Originally, the settlement was estimated to be around £35billion to £39billion. In July 2021, Downing Street rejected an EU estimate of a total bill of nearly £41billion and said it would be less.
Much of these payments relate to things that the UK committed to while it was a member of the EU but had not yet funded. Some of the money also relates to payments made during the so-called ‘transition period’ between February 2020 and December 2020, when Brexit had happened but the UK temporarily remained in the bloc’s single market and customs union.
Following this, a free trade agreement between the two sides came into force.
The ONS data revealed that £18.1billion was handed over to Brussels in 2020, followed by £5.8billion in 2021, £9.3billion in 2022, £8.2billion in 2023 and £3.25billion last year.
When Britain was a full EU member, its net contribution to Brussels ranged from £8.9billion in 2017 to £9.4billion in 2019.
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Now Britain set to hand more than £50billion to EU under Brexit deal in what Reform call ‘slap in the face’ to UK taxpayers