Brexit department has already spent more than £250,000 on legal advice in just eight weeks
Official figures show they have spent an average of around £33,500 a week since it was set up by Theresa May in mid-July
THE NEW Brexit department has already spent more than a quarter of a million pounds on legal advice in the eight weeks since its creation, according to official figures.
Britain has yet to formally start talks to withdraw from the European Union, with the Prime Minister and Brexit Secretary David Davis coming under fire for revealing little detail about their plans to MPs.
But the Department for Exiting the European Union said its legal bill has so far reached an estimated £268,711 - an average of around £33,500 a week.
Officials are still assessing the total amount of taxpayers' cash required for legal advice over the next 12 months when the UK Government is expected to have triggered Article 50.
The department was created by Theresa May in mid-July after the historic vote for Brexit in the June 23 referendum.
Mr Davis was put in charge alongside fellow Brexiteers Liam Fox, now International Trade Secretary, and new Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in a move viewed as an attempt to allow those who backed withdrawal to play a major role in finding solutions.
David Jones, a minister in the department, replied to a written parliamentary question from Nick Clegg, saying: "To date, the department has incurred an estimated total of £256,000 in fixed-fee legal advice with the Government legal department and a further £12,711 in relation to additional billed fees and disbursements.”
The former Liberal Democrat leader, now the party's EU spokesman, said in response to the figures: "Anyone who thinks Brexit will be quick or easy is seriously mistaken.
"This huge taxpayer-funded Brexit bill for legal advice shows how ill-prepared Whitehall is for what will be the biggest and most complex set of negotiations it has ever attempted.”
He added: "But it is not just legal advice where the Government is ill-prepared - we simply don't have anything like the number of trade negotiators necessary to establish a new trading relationship with the EU or other countries.
"The process of leaving the European Union, regardless of what deal the Government eventually agrees, will be long and painful and risks a long period of uncertainty for British business, jobs and our wider economy."
Mr Fox told MPs this morning that he was not looking to create "a standing army of bureaucrats" to negotiate Brexit.