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How Britain is £170 billion worse off in the European Union

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BRITAIN'S membership of the EU leaves the nation £170billion a year worse off, a new study shows today.

The huge figure equates to about 11 per cent of national output - and more than £6,000 for every household.

The figures are based on a report published last year by Professor Tim Congdon (pictured), when he estimated the bill was at least £150billion. He updated his findings which provide more fuel for the Daily Express crusade for Britain to leave the EU.

Economist Prof Congdon is economics spokesman for the UK Independence Party whose annual conference starts today in London.

He believes the biggest single cost comes from 120,000 pages of EU law.



He said: "After a decade outside the EU, Britain would be a much more prosperous nation as well as having the opportunity to restore its traditional constitutional and legal arrangements."

Prof Congdon estimates that  direct expenses like payments to the EU budget cost the average British household some £750 a year, rising towards £1,000 if Turkey and new Balkan countries join the EU and need support.

He also includes the price of trade distortion arising from the Common Agricultural Policy and general protectionism as well as  jobs that may have been lost to some 100,000 UK-born people thanks to mass migration from eastern Europe.
Waste, fraud and corruption and “unforeseen commitments” such as the cost of health and benefits “tourism” also feature.

But he claims the biggest single cost comes from 120,000 pages of EU law, including job-reducing employment regulations, green energy policies and financial regulations.

Highlighting the EUs impact on British families, he said membership means higher taxes and food and utility bills, more competition for jobs and loss of income because of EU immigration and business growth held back by Brussels red tape.

He declared: “Britain should be an independent sovereign nation.

“The UK can leave the EU and retain strong and vibrant trade links with the EU.

“Outside the EU we can put in place the free trade agreement with our European partners which is all that most people in Britain wanted when we joined the then ‘Common Market’ in 1973.”

But leaving the EU would not immediately and automatically make Britain £170 billion a year richer, he warned.

The damage done over more than 40 years including closed businesses, lost jobs and excessive energy bills would take at least a decade to repair.

But leaving would quickly net savings from direct payments to the EU budget and avoid “nonsense” such as European Court of Justice fines while businesses and jobs would return over time.

“After a decade outside the EU, Britain would be a much more prosperous nation as well as having the opportunity to restore its traditional constitutional and legal arrangements.”

Ukip leader Nigel Farage commented: “Professor Congdon’s figures are to date the most comprehensive study of the overall cost of our membership of the EU. And that cost is staggering.

“It is not just a financial cost, it is a human cost, in jobs lost and not created, in livelihoods destroyed of businesses blocked, of hopes decimated.

“Getting back our freedom doesn’t just make historical and political sense, but as these figures show it makes economic and moral sense too.”

Ukip MEP Gerrard Batten, who first initiated the annual cost analysis in 2006, wrote in a foreword to the report: “The whole EU project is not, and never was, about the development of trade and prosperity for its member states.

“It is about the creation of a United States of Europe. It is an undemocratic, utopian, political project advance by lies and deceit - unwanted and unloved by the British and increasingly by most ordinary Europeans.”

Prof Congdon lambasted the three main parties for failing yet to produce their own cost-benefit analyses to challenge his assessment and back their own claims for staying in the EU.

“For over 40 years officialdom has lied to the British people about the UK’s membership of the EU. They must be told the truth,” he said.

A Foreign Office Spokesman commented: “There are problems with the idea of a simple cost/benefit exercise.

“Not all costs and benefits are quantifiable, such as the benefit of our leading role in EU foreign policy.

“However the UK is pushing hard for reforms to the EU and the Prime Minister achieved the first ever cut in the EU’s seven-year budget in February, and we are also negotiating the world’s biggest ever trade deal between the EU and the US which could bring up to £10 billion a year to the UK, or £380 per family.”

The Government’s ongoing Balance of Competences review would let “the public see and judge for themselves what works well and where there are problems in the EU”, added the spokesman.


This article first appeared in the Daily Express. You can see it here.

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