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<\/p>\nPost-Brexit payments to the EU are set to pass \u00a350billion in a “slap in the face” to British taxpayers, new figures show.<\/p>\n
Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed the UK gave \u00a33.25billion to Brussels last year.<\/p>\n
This takes the total paid to the European Union since Britain officially left in 2020 to approximately \u00a344billion, according to the Government agency. <\/p>\n
In addition, the Government has committed to providing at least \u00a38billion more as part of the exit deal.<\/p>\n
This means more than \u00a350billion will be paid to the bloc, far exceeding what previous governments claimed they would be willing to pay to exit the bloc.<\/p>\n
Critics have called the figure an insult to the many British households already scraping by and potentially facing tax hikes in the budget later this month. <\/p>\n
Former Tory Brexit minister David Jones, who defected to Reform UK in July, 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. <\/p>\n
“The European Union should no longer be the recipient of funds from this country as far as I’m concerned.<\/p>\n
The UK gave \u00a33.25billion to Brussels last year, taking the total already handed over to more than \u00a344billion<\/p>\n
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“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.”<\/p>\n
Head of the MCC Brussels think-tank Frank Furedi 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.<\/p>\n
“As far as they were concerned they just wanted an easy life and they didn’t particularly care about the financial consequences of this.”<\/p>\n
He added: “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.<\/p>\n
POST-BREXIT BRITAIN – READ MORE:\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The Government had committed to paying an additional \u00a38billion under the exit deal<\/p>\n
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“It’s a tragedy that we’ve let all this money slide out of our hands and handed it over to the EU.”<\/p>\n
Most of the payments made were under the bill which Britain agreed to pay in the Withdrawal Agreement after leaving the union in January 2020.<\/p>\n
The settlement was originally thought to be between \u00a335billion to \u00a339billion. <\/p>\n
In July 2021, Downing Street rejected an EU estimate of the total bill which came in at \u00a341billion, insisting it would be less.<\/p>\n
The majority of the money sent relates to things which the UK already committed to while it was a member of the bloc but had not yet paid for. <\/p>\n
Some was paid in the so-called ‘transition period’ between February and December 2020, during which Britain had officially left the bloc but temporarily remained in its single market and customs union. <\/p>\n
After this point, a free trade agreement was implemented. <\/p>\n
The ONS figures showed that \u00a318.1billion was paid to Brussels in 2020, followed by \u00a35.8billion in 2021, \u00a39.3billion in 2022, \u00a38.2billion in 2023 and \u00a33.25billion last year.<\/p>\n
For reference, when the UK was a full member of the EU, its net contribution ranged from \u00a38.9billion in 2017 to \u00a39.4billion in 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Post-Brexit payments to the EU are set to pass \u00a350billion in a “slap in the face” to British…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,12,285,16,3106,15,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-541183","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-uk-politics","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115472290560457685","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}