ACCORDING to data released on September 7, Britain receives less money in subsidies from Brussels than any other country in the European Union in proportion to gross domestic product.

Almost two decades after joining, Spain was still receiving 20.4 per cent of the EU's entire 90 billion euro budget, split evenly between farm payments and regional aid for poorer provinces.

However our own British officials are saying the figures are massaged to disguise the full scale of British contributions, insisting that our net payments in 2003 were in fact closer to 3.8 billion euros. Nearly three times what the EU are quoting.

They accuse Brussels of deliberately leaving out a whole set of extra payments that boost the overall burden on British taxpayers. These include customs duties from ships and aircraft using British ports.

"Every time a ship docks or a plane lands in Britain, we pay duty to Brussels. But for whatever reason, they like to bury it," one official has claimed.

According to EU's own figures our net contribution is roughly 1.8billion yet Michaele Schreyer, the European Union Budget Commissioner, said only days ago that the EU was cheap at the price. Earlier this summer she demanded an end to the UK rebate, saying British taxpayers should pay most towards the EU's trillion euro budget.

If we aren't to receive any EU funding then isn't it best, as UKIP suggest, to leave the European Union altogether? Isn't £34million a week or more a little expensive for the privilege of waving a European flag at the next Olympics?

IAN UPTON, UKIP, North West Press Officer.