Brexit bill will soar above £18 billion May is offering in Italy, admits minister

A Cabinet minister today conceded that Britain’s Brexit bill to the EU is bound to soar above the £18 billion being dangled in Theresa May’s Florence speech today.

As the Prime Minister headed to Italy in an attempt to break a deadlock in exit talks, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said Britain would “meet its obligations”.

Mr Grayling, a leading Leave campaigner in last year’s referendum, insisted that freedom of movement rules will end in March 2019, despite warnings from the EU that single market access requires the right of citizens to work freely. But he appeared to signal that the Government was now willing to pay significantly more to the EU after Brexit than the €20 billion which Downing Street trailed as the price of a transition period.

Asked specifically about the pensions bill for European officials — which is one of several long-term obligations being billed to the UK, Mr Grayling told BBC radio’s Today: “We have said all the way through that we are a nation that meets its obligations, that’s right and proper. We should always be a nation that meets its obligations, and that’s something she is going to say again today.”

The European Commission claims the final bill for Brexit could be more than £60 billion, once these obligations are tallied up. They include development spending in the Third World, long-term loans and projects.

Mr Grayling said Mrs May would set out the “principles” of a future relationship with the bloc in the speech, but said the details on immigration arrangements for EU citizens during a transition period would be worked out in negotiations.

“But it’s in all of our interests that we migrate to our life outside the European Union in the best possible way for Britain and actually in the best possible way for our friends and neighbours across the Channel, that’s the responsible thing to do,” he said.

But one of Britain’s most senior officials warned today that Britain will lose jobs and growth unless it stays in parts of the single market and accepts European rules.

Sir Martin Donnelly, until recently the permanent secretary at the Department for International Trade, said: “The Government is talking about openness but not delivering it.”

Formerly at the Business department and the Foreign Office, Sir Martin said ministers were ducking the essential choice over their future relations with Europe. “That choice — between the rhetoric of openness and the reality of continuing to benefit from the single market — needs to be made soon, or it will be made for us by the ticking clock of the Article 50 timetable,” he writes.

“If we leave without continued market access guaranteed beyond a transition period, a new deal will be much harder to achieve from outside. And many British jobs will be lost in the meantime.” EU citizens in London said Mrs May’s speech could mark “real progress” if, as trailed, she strengthens their rights in law to live and work in Britain. However, a “stumbling block” remained over her outright refusal to allow the European Court of Justice to make rulings on their rights after Brexit.

Maike Bohn, of campaign group the3million, said she knew of EU friends quitting London at a rate of “two or three a week” and said many more were considering whether to stay. “If we derive our rights directly from the withdrawal treaty, that is real progress,” she said. However there seemed to be “intransigence at the very top” over the ECJ.

Mr Grayling said: “What we’re saying is that we want to make a transition to life outside the EU the best possible transition for British citizens, British businesses, EU citizens, EU businesses.”