Tory anger at officials over Brexit divorce bill
Civil servants accused of keeping Cabinet ‘out of the loop’ with £36bn offer to EU
BREXIT negotiators have been accused of trying to “ram through” a £36billion divorce bill while most of the Cabinet is on holiday in a furious backlash from ministers and senior Eurosceptic Conservatives.
Yesterday, The Sunday Telegraph disclosed that senior Whitehall officials had concluded that the offer was the only way to break a deadlock in negotiations with the EU and push ahead with discussions on a future trade deal.
The scale of the divorce bill has infuriated Eurosceptic Cabinet ministers and Tory MPS, many of whom believe that Britain is under no obligation to pay anything once it leaves the EU and should in fact get some money back.
Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, told MPS three weeks ago that European leaders can “go whistle” if they expected Britain to pay an “exorbitant” divorce bill.
Theresa May and senior Eurosceptic Cabinet ministers including Mr Johnson and Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, are on holiday while Parliament is in recess.
Eurosceptic ministers have long been concerned that British officials are intent on derailing plans for a clean Brexit, particularly after their role in David Cameron’s “Project Fear” campaign during the EU referendum.
A government source said: “It feels like a lot of work is going on over the summer and a lot of decisions are being made while the Cabinet is out of the loop. It’s not good. Cynics would say that they are trying to ram it through while there isn’t time for proper scrutiny.”
David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, is leading talks but nearly 100 officials are working on the negotiations and are understood to have been involved in drawing up the plans for the divorce bill. Last month it was claimed that Mr Johnson and Dr Fox had been “kept in the dark” about an announcement that EU citizens will be allowed to continue to come to the UK after Brexit.
Both were abroad when the announcements were made by Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, and Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, who were both senior figures in the Remain campaign. Downing Street yesterday dismissed the £36 billion figure as “speculative”.
David Jones, a former Brexit minister, said: “It looks very much as if officials are trying to bounce ministers into accepting an outcome of negotiations they will not be happy with. The whole thing is extremely unhelpful and against the national interest.
“Any payment we make to the EU should not simply be a sweetener for a trading relationship. The Eurosceptics in the Cabinet will not accept a figure of this scale.”
Last month British Brexit negotiators concluded the EU had created a straitjacket for the negotiation process by refusing to talk about trade until it
reached a deal on citizens’ rights, money and Northern Ireland.
Senior Whitehall officials are now looking to propose a transition deal under which Britain would continue to offer to make net payments to the EU of €10 billion (£9.03 billion) a year for up to three years after Brexit. The payments would represent a partial payment on a final £36 billion bill that negotiators hope will jump-start talks on trade and future relations.
Mrs May and Mr Davis have accepted that an amount will have to be paid and that they need to “determine a fair settlement of the UK’S rights and obligations”. Jacob Rees-mogg, a Eurosceptic Tory MP, said that he and his colleagues would vote down the Brexit divorce bill in Parliament.
He said: “I think £36billion is much too much. We have no legal obligation to pay anything. Accepting the premise that you have to pay to leave the club is fundamentally wrong. In terms of a negotiating strategy it is a sign of weakness for us to offer money before we move on to other things.
“They have set this straitjacket; they should untie it. We should not fall into their trap … we want the money for British public services, not commission fat cats and their pensions.”
Peter Bone, another Eurosceptic Tory MP, said “I would have thought we should be getting some of that money back, we shouldn’t be giving them money. I don’t understand what the logic is behind giving the European Union any money whatsoever because we have been paying in and in and in.”
However, other Eurosceptic MPS believe that the divorce bill may be a price worth paying. Conor Burns, parliamentary private secretary to Mr Johnson, said: “Britain is a nation that honours her obligations. Many of us who campaigned to leave the EU are more focused on the prize than the price.”
A series of position papers setting out Britain’s approach on a new customs agreement and a solution to the Northern Ireland border issue could start to be published as soon as next week.