EU COSTING US £267M A WEEK
New figures show why we need to speed up Brexit
BRITAIN handed a colossal £13.9billion to the EU last year, official figures revealed yesterday.
The eye-watering sum – equivalent to £267million a week – was paid to Brussels by UK taxpayers to cover the country’s membership of the bloc.
Brexit campaigners last night seized on the Office for National Statistics’ data as confirmation of the urgent need to cut ties as soon as possible.
Senior Tory Peter Bone said: “The message to the Government is get on and get us out of the EU and don’t pay any more money to Brussels.
“This money should be spent where it is needed in this country and not in Bulgaria, Romania or other parts of the EU.”
The lavish contribution was revealed in the annual “Pink Book”, which documents the net flow of financial transactions between the UK and the rest of the world. It puts the UK on course to hand over more than £22billion to
Brussels over the period from last year’s vote to quit the EU and the country’s scheduled exit from the bloc in March 2019. Mr Bone, MP for Wellingborough, said: “If we stopped paying into EU coffers, we could save ourselves nearly £14billion, that would be money we could use for social care, the NHS, reducing the deficit and we could still have some left for tax cuts.”
Craig Mackinlay, Tory MP for South Thanet, said: “Today’s revealing figure of a net contribution of £13.9billion is reason enough for exiting the EU.”
Ukip MEP Jonathan Arnott said: “We voted to end British cash going to the European Union, not for the tap to keep flowing. It truly beggars belief that even these eye-watering amounts of money aren’t giving Theresa May pause to think.
“She’s still agreeing to hand many billions more over to the EU in a socalled ‘divorce bill’, which hasn’t the slightest legal basis.
“British politicians often pretend they have a magic money tree, but the European Union actually has one – it’s called the British taxpayer.”
Britain’s gross contribution to Brussels last year was £18.9billion, but the country received a £5billion rebate.
Officials calculated a further £4.4billion out of the gross contribution was spent on UK agricultural subsidies and grants to public-sector bodies – leaving a net contribution to the EU of £9.4billion.
However, Euro-sceptics argue that the EU spending should be counted as part of the overall contribution because Brussels rather than the Government decides where the cash is spent. Since joining the European Economic Community in 1973, Britain’s total contribution to the Brussels budget has been £375,296billion.
Figures in the latest ONS Pink Book also showed that UK exports of goods and services to the rest of the world were higher than UK exports to the EU for the eighth year in a row.
Exports to non-EU countries were worth around £312billion in 2016, an eight per cent increase on 2015, and strong evidence of worldwide demand for British goods and services.
Exports to EU countries were around £236billion in 2016, a three per cent increase since 2015. The fastest growing export market for the UK since 2010 was South Korea, with exports increasing by 97 per cent to £6.1billion. Japan moved into third position after buying £12.5billion worth of UK goods and services, an increase of 61 per cent since 2010.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said: “Today’s figures confirm that British goods and services are in demand across the globe, and non-EU markets like South Korea and Japan are becoming more important for UK exports. It’s a trend predicted by the European Commission themselves, who say 90 per cent of global growth over the next 20 years will come from outside EU.”