Rejoining EU would cost Britain £750m a week, Brexit campaign group warns

Andy Burnham has been warned that taking Britain back into the European Union could cost the country hundreds of millions of pounds a week.

A new Brexit campaign group, Stay Out, has claimed the UK would need to pay as much as £39.3billion each year in contributions if the Prime Minister carried out a Brexit U-turn.

The eye-watering figures are more than double the gross amount paid in 2016, before the UK left the bloc.

Oliver Lewis, Boris Johnson's chief Brexit negotiator, as well as Lord Michael Gove, the chairman of the 2016 campaign, are heading up the new group.

Mr Lewis warned the Prime Minister: "The EU that Britain would be rejoining is more indebted, divided and expensive than the one we left, and on the Commission’s own numbers it would cost us £750million a week, with no rebate.

"The bloc is also getting bigger, with Albania, Moldova and the western Balkans all in the queue to join, and Brussels wants Britain back in as one of the few countries rich enough to pay for it.

"The country has had enough of arguing about Europe and it is time to move on and spend our money on our own priorities."

Lord Gove has backed the warning by Stay Out, and further warned rejoining the EU would mean "handing back control of our laws, borders, money and trade", as well as coughing up a "good deal more" in membership fees.

He said: "Families worried about their mortgages, energy bills and the weekly shop want a government that spends its time and their money on easing the cost of living.

"Sending £750million a week to Brussels would do nothing to help with any of this.

"Reopening this question would just commit the country to another decade of fractious negotiations and a return to the divisions we have spent years putting behind us, at the very moment people are desperate for Westminster to get on with delivering on their priorities."

Speaking at the European Political Community summit in Dublin on Thursday, Mr Burnham said a "win-win" deal between the EU and the UK was possible.

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Speaking ahead of the UK-EU summit on November 20, the Prime Minister said: "I believe there is a good deal to be done that could be a win-win for Britain and Europe.

"I think it actually could be more like the Brexit that people thought they were voting for in 2016.

"I don’t think people thought they were going to get a Brexit as hard as the one that finally came through at the end of 2019."

He added that although there was still more negotiating to be done, the eventual settlement could be "closer to what people voted for at the referendum".

The Commission has forecast that it will need 1.26 per cent of members’ gross national income in 2028, rising from about 0.9 per cent in 2019.

The Commission could also be eyeing up six extra charges on EU members on major businesses, from electrical waste to tobacco.

The bill, as a result, could rise to a staggering £803million a week, the campaign group's analysis found.

The Prime Minister is also expected to buckle to pressure from member states at the summit over food and farming regulations.