Britain could face second Brexit bill – and 30 years before any money back

BRITAIN could be forced to pay a “second Brexit bill” of £30billion and made to wait 30 years before getting any money back from the EU bank, a senior European official has claimed.

Alexander Stubb, vice-president of the European Investment Bank, said that the UK could be forced to pay billions of pounds after Brexit if projects to which it had contributed failed.

He also said that Britain could have to wait until 2054 before the EU’S bank returned £3 billion the country has paid into it since 1973.

Eurosceptic Tory MPS said this was “completely absurd” and would make a no-deal Brexit more likely.

There was further turmoil in David Davis’s Brexit department yesterday as he was forced to replace his third minister in five months.

Baroness Anelay resigned as Minister of State for Exiting the European Union as a result of an injury suffered while climbing out of a Black Hawk helicopter two years ago when she was a Foreign Office minister. Mr Davis’s team was shaken up in June when David Jones was sacked by Theresa May and Lord Bridges resigned in the aftermath of the general election.

The Brexit Secretary had already lost James Chapman, his former chief of staff, who quit during the campaign. Last month Oliver Robbins, the top official at the department, left to take up a role reporting directly to Mrs May.

Lady Anelay said she was “certain” that Brexit would be a success. Writing on the Conservativehome website, she said: “We are getting more control of our borders, our money and our laws, and at the same time the course the European Union is taking – bold as it may be – is deeply integrationist, and increasingly unpalatable.” Meanwhile, Mr Stubb rejected a suggestion made by the European Union Committee of the House of Lords earlier this year that the EU bank may actually owe the UK £9 billion (€10 billion).

The UK has a 16 per cent share in the bank which funds projects in the bloc but will leave after Brexit because only EU states are allowed to be members.

The Lords committee said in a report that “the UK might expect its €3.5billion in called up capital to be returned” if it stops being a shareholder, and suggested the sum due could even be in the region of €10billion. But Mr Stubb said the latter figure was “incorrect” when it was put to him on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday.

Philip Davies, the Tory MP for Shipley, said the legal grounds for the first bill for Brexit had not yet been demonstrated, let alone the justification for a second one.

He said: “I think it has already been established that there is no legal basis for any bill to leave the EU. It’s highly unlikely that there is a legal basis for this one.”

€30 bn The amount of money the EU says Britain may still have to pay if projects it has previously contributed to fail