The Daily Mail reports: “Britain has been forced to hand over £15 million to the European Union to settle a bizarre dispute over garlic.” It pointed out “Brussels demanded the sum because it ruled that the UK did not charge enough duty on shipments of garlic from China.” The ECJ held that “the British taxman should have classed the imported garlic as fresh rather than frozen, and so charged a higher tariff.”

Bill Cash was quoted as saying ‘This £15 million is a lot of money by any standards, but what I call the Dracula Tax is just yet another example of what is now becoming an endemic problem.

‘We are increasingly losing cases in the court – it’s a natural consequence us our being boxed into a European legal framework that is not dependent on policy. I think this case is petty but it also highlights what we are up against.’

As the Daily Mail pointed out, Bill Cash “believes Parliament needs to pass a new law that would enable Ministers to bypass the demands of the European court as well as human rights legislation.”