UK could face exit bill of up to £51bn, warns ex-ambassador

The European Union can be expected to take a “hard line” on demanding an exit bill of 40-60 billion euros (£34-£51bn) from the UK as part of any Brexit deal, Britain’s former ambassador to the EU has warned.

The other member states believe Brexit will “explode a bomb” under EU budgets and regard extracting a large sum from the UK as a key priority in upcoming withdrawal negotiations, Sir Ivan Rogers told MPs.

Senior figures from the EU institutions and the remaining 27 member states believe that the prospect of crashing out of the EU without a deal will be so “unpalatable” to Britain that it will have to pay up, he told the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee.

But International Trade Secretary Liam Fox dismissed the suggestion of an exit bill as “absurd”, telling another parliamentary committee: “I find it bizarre because the UK is using a legal power that we have under the Lisbon Treaty, a provision that was freely entered into by all our European partners. Why should they then turn round to say that we should pay their costs for a process that everybody equally entered into at the time?”

Chief European Commission negotiator Michel Barnier has reportedly told colleagues that the UK will be presented with a £50bn exit bill after Prime Minister Theresa May formally notifies its intention to quit under Article 50 of the EU treaties.

Speaking in public for the first time since he quit in January, Sir Ivan said the reported figure might be “unreasonable” but was “genuine”.

Sir Ivan Rogers, Britain’s former ambassador to the European Union.