Brexit bill: Hitting Britain with fee of more than £30bn would be 'UNACCEPTABLE' says poll
NEARLY three quarters of voters believe that hitting British taxpayers with a EU exit bill of £30 billion or more would be "unacceptable", an opinion poll indicated last night.
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Seventy-two per cent of adults quizzed in the survey were opposed to the Government paying the sum to Brussels in a "divorce" fee.
The ICM poll is expected to be seen as a warning to EU chiefs that Britain will not cave into financial demands for as much as £80billion during the current negotiations over a departure deal from the European bloc.
It is also likely to trigger alarm in Whitehall, where officials are understood have discussed a possible compromise figure that could be as high as £36 billion.
Britons would find unacceptable for UK to be hit with a £30bn Brexit bill
ICM researchers put a series of figures to selected voters in the poll to gauge the level of support for Britain paying Brussels to leave the EU.
Even when a proposal as low as £20 billion was put forward, only 18 per cent of voters quizzed described it as "acceptable" while nearly two-thirds (65 per cent) disagreed.
Only 11 per cent thought £30 billion was an "acceptable" payment to quit the bloc.
The EU has threatened Britain with a divorce bill
And a massive 75 per cent described a potential bill of £40billion as "unacceptable" compared with just 9 per cent in favour.
Public support for paying an EU exit fee of £10billion had increased since April however, according to the poll.
A total of 41 per cent described that proposal as acceptable compared with just 15% in the previous survey in the spring.
ICM interviewed a selected sample of 1,972 voters online from 25 to 28 of August for the survey.