{"id":546618,"date":"2025-11-03T17:06:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T17:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/546618\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T17:06:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T17:06:16","slug":"billions-of-uk-taxpayer-cash-handed-to-eu-after-brexit-like-cash-to-a-junkie-uk-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/546618\/","title":{"rendered":"Billions of UK taxpayer cash handed to EU after Brexit ‘like cash to a junkie’ | UK | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

British taxpayers\u2019 cash sent to Brussels since Brexit has \u201cvanished into a black hole\u201d<\/a> with critics warning that it was like \u201cgiving money to a drug-addicted junkie\u201d. Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith<\/a> said ministers should stop handing over billions to the EU until there is full transparency over where the money has gone.<\/p>\n

He told the Express: \u201cBritish civil servants and ministers should not hand over any money to Brussels unless there is full accountability and transparency. Otherwise, it would be like giving money to a drug-addicted junkie without knowing how it is being spent. The EU has a notorious reputation for funding unnecessary projects and wasting taxpayers\u2019 money.\u201d<\/p>\n

His remarks came after a Daily Mail investigation revealed that ministers had “no idea” what had happened to the majority of the money handed to Brussels after the UK left the European Union<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Only \u2018a fraction\u2019 of the money has reportedly been accounted for,<\/a> following an audit of EU documents which showed that only around 8% of UK contributions had been ringfenced to pay for specific EU schemes.<\/p>\n

Mark Francois, chairman of the European Research Group, said: \u201cBritish taxpayers have a right to know how the payments we made to Brussels to fulfil our legacy EU obligations after leaving the EU have been spent.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cLabour\u2019s Europhile ministers should be able to access this information via diplomatic channels \u2013 and the sooner they come up with the answer, the better.\u201d<\/p>\n

The documents reportedly showed Brexit<\/a> negotiator Maros Sefcovic admitting that the majority of the cash was handed over \u201cwithout any specific link between a given item of revenue and a given item of expenditure\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Sefcovic added that the only exceptions to this were Britain’s contributions<\/a> to the IT systems, as well as pensions.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the time the revelations became public, Frank Furedi, director of MCC Brussels, a think tank, told the Mail: \u201cThis is nothing short of a scandal. Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has vanished into a Brussels black hole, and our own ministers can\u2019t even say where it\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since 2020, the United Kingdom has sent \u00a344 billion to the EU<\/a>, according to figures released by the Office of National Statistics.<\/p>\n

A Treasury spokesman said that the payments \u201creflect legal obligations from the deal made by the previous government.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British taxpayers\u2019 cash sent to Brussels since Brexit has \u201cvanished into a black hole\u201d with critics warning that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,5322,748,2000,175585,299,5187,1699,4884,173458,16,175584,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-546618","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-brexit-news","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-eu-funding-transparency","13":"tag-europe","14":"tag-european","15":"tag-european-union","16":"tag-great-britain","17":"tag-iain-duncan-smith","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-uk-taxpayers","20":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115486863287951849","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546618","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=546618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}