A NEW Brexit row has emerged over the cost of the UK’s “divorce bill” from the European Union which is now estimated to be billions more than expected.
Downing Street on Friday rejected the new net figure that emerged in Brussels' latest accounts of 47.5 billion euros (£40.8 billion).
No 10 insisted the figure Britain owes remains within the range of its previous estimates of between £35 billion and £39 billion.
The bill, buried in the EU's accounts for 2020, states that 6.8 billion euros (£5.8 billion) is to be paid by the UK this year.
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Downing Street said it does not accept the revised sum and pledged to issue more details to Parliament in the coming weeks.
A spokesperson for No 10 said: "We don't recognise that figure, it's an estimate produced by the EU for its own internal accounting purposes.
"For example, it doesn't reflect all the money owed back to the UK, which reduces the amount we pay.
"Our estimate remains in the central range of between £35 and £39 billion and we will publish full details in Parliament shortly."
The so-called divorce bill covers spending commitments made during the 47 years of the UK's membership of the bloc.
A methodology for calculating the sum was agreed during negotiations for the Withdrawal Agreement that paved the way for the UK's departure, but an exact figure was not agreed. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimated it to be £37.1 billion in 2018.
In Brussels, a European Commission spokesperson said the new figure is "correct".
They said: "The report is final and the calculations were made in line with the withdrawal agreement.
"We have already informed the UK Government about the payments that they have to do with regard to the first part of this year and they've already in fact paid part of the amount concerned.
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"Therefore, we have absolutely no indications at this point in time that the bill, or the amount that we've calculated will be contested."
It comes as Brexit minister Lord Frost has blamed negotiators under Theresa May as being responsible to a "very large degree" for issues with the Northern Ireland Protocol.
The Conservative peer was grilled in person by assembly members on Stormont's Executive Office Committee, which is scrutinising issues arising from Brexit, on Friday.
Frost argued that the problems with the post-Brexit agreement that has caused a trade barrier in the Irish Sea are largely down to the EU's implementation of the deal he helped broker.
He also claimed the Protocol could have been better negotiated and blamed the team put together by May.
DUP member Christopher Stalford quoted May's former chief of staff, Lord Barwell, who has claimed that Boris Johnson's Government "knew it was a bad deal" but intended to "wriggle out of it later".
Stalford said that Frost had inherited "a dog's breakfast of a deal”, adding: "You've been left to clean up the mess haven't you?"
READ MORE: EU-UK Brexit Northern Ireland talks had 'no breakthroughs'
Frost said: "We intend to implement what we signed up to but it's the fact of implementation that's causing the problem.
"I would say that it was the inheritance that we inherited from the previous Government and from the previous negotiating team that has been a significant part of the difficulty and the reason the Protocol is shaped as it is is because we had a particular inheritance from the previous team who could not get their deal, rightly in my view, through Parliament.
"Unfortunately we were not able to go back to scratch and do things in a different way and I think the previous team are to a very large degree responsible for some of the infelicities in this Protocol and the Withdrawal Agreement that we might be better without but unfortunately we are where we are."
Frost argued that it is unreasonable to describe the Protocol as a "definitive text" with no further discussions around it required.
He said: "I don't think it's right to look at the Protocol as a sort of definitive text that was there in October 2019 and there's nothing more to say. It's very clear from reading the text that that's not the case.
"For example, the whole concept of goods at risk, which is obviously at the core of some of the problems in movements between GB and Northern Ireland. "It's not reasonable to say, given that the situation has changed in various ways and given that parts of the Protocol remained to be worked out, that it is a definitive text and as of October 2019 that's it."
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