Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether his Department has identified costs in addition to the estimation of a settlement of £35-39 billion that the UK will need to pay as a result of leaving the EU.

The settlement agreed with the EU represents a comprehensive settlement covering all of the mutual commitments between the EU and the UK. The Chancellor was clear in his letter to the TSC that £35-39 billion is a reasonable central estimate, as agreed in the joint report and produced using publicly available European Commission data. The NAO report concluded this was a reasonable estimate. The OBR estimated, at the Spring Statement, that the settlement would be around £37bn.

With respect to additional spending to deal with exit preparations HM Treasury has allocated over £2 billion of additional funding to departments and the Devolved Administrations so far. This breaks down as:

-£412m of additional funding over the spending review period for DExEU, DIT and the FCO at Autumn Statement 2016.

-£286m of additional funding for 17/18 (a full breakdown of which can be found in Supplementary Estimates 17/18).

-Over £1.5bn of additional funding for 18/19. A full breakdown of which can be found in the Chief Secretary’s Written Ministerial Statement, HCWS540, laid on the 13th March (https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2018-03-13/HCWS540/).

The Chancellor also set aside at Autumn Statement 2017 an additional £1.5 billion for costs in 2019-20. This money will be allocated later this year. The Chancellor was also clear in his letter that the value of the settlement is, by its very nature, dependent on future events and that it was not possible to put a definitive number on it.