spend it

I keep seeing Tory politicians on the telly like Nigel Evans quoting that the EU is costing around £1bn per month.

Still wrong. That's the figure before the EU rebates. It's astonishing how widespread the coverage of misinformation has become.

It's actually about £8.5bn per year.

That's a little bit less than the amount that UK gives to foreign aid and about 1% of the Government's annual budget. It doesn't even show in the public spending pie charts.

No wonder hardly anyone cared about it before the Referendum. Let's face it, the Conservatives have added about £1 Trillion to the UK deficit since they came to power (see https://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk)


I've just taken a peek at the latest UK Government paper on Customs and Excise. It's here

and it illustrates that the admin burden on UK<>EU trade is £15 billion, plus a few training bits and pieces.

So £15 bn new cost plays against £8.5 bn old cost, or worst exaggerated case £13bn. We'll still be paying more once we've left. Unless that Government Paper updated 7 October is wrong?