New dispute over size of Brexit ‘divorce bill’

AFRESH Brexit dispute has emerged over the size of the UK’s “divorce bill” after the European Union estimated it is now billions more than expected.

Downing Street on Friday rejected the new net figure that emerged in Brussels’ latest accounts of 47.5 billion euros (£40.8 billion).

No 10 insisted the figure Britain owes remains within the range of its previous estimates of between £35 billion and £39 billion.

The bill, buried in the EU’s accounts for 2020, states that 6.8 billion euros (£5.8 billion) is to be paid by the UK this year. Downing Street said it does not accept the revised sum and pledged to issue more details to Parliament.

“We don’t recognise that figure, it’s an estimate produced by the EU for its own internal accounting purposes,” a No 10 spokesman said.

“For example, it doesn’t reflect all the money owed back to the UK, which reduces the amount we pay.

“Our estimate remains in the central range of between £35 billion and £39 billion and we will publish full details in Parliament shortly.”

The so-called divorce bill covers spending commitments made during the 47 years of the UK’s membership of the bloc. A methodology for calculating the sum was agreed during negotiations for the Withdrawal Agreement that paved the way for the UK’s departure, but an exact figure was not agreed. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimated it to be £37.1 billion in 2018. In Brussels, an EC spokesman said the new figure is correct.

“The report is final and the calculations were made in line with the withdrawal agreement,” he said.

“We have already informed the UK Government about the payments that they have to do with regard to the first part of this year and they’ve already in fact paid part of the amount concerned. Therefore, we have no indications at this point in time that the bill, or the amount that we’ve calculated, will be contested.”

Meanwhile Brexit minister Lord Frost has blamed negotiators under Theresa May as being responsible to a “very large degree” for issues with the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The Conservative peer was grilled in person by assembly members on

Stormont’s Executive Office Committee, which is scrutinising issues arising from Brexit, on Friday.

Lord Frost argued that the problems with the post-Brexit agreement that has caused a trade barrier in the Irish Sea are largely down to the EU’s implementation of the deal he helped broker. But he argued that the protocol could have been better negotiated if it were not for the work done by the team of Boris Johnson’s predecessor as prime minister.

DUP member Christopher Stalford quoted Mrs May’s ex-chief of staff, Lord Barwell, who claimed the Mr Johnson’s Government “knew it was a bad deal” but intended to “wriggle out of it later”.

Lord Frost said: “We intend to implement what we signed up to but it’s the fact of implementation that’s causing the problem. I would say that it was the inheritance that we inherited from the previous Government and from the previous negotiating team that has been a significant part of the difficulty and the reason the protocol is shaped as it is, is because we had a particular inheritance from the previous team who could not get their deal, rightly in my view, through Parliament.”