Map of the week: Public spending in the UK
This week's map looks at public expenditure in each of the UK nations and regions as a proportion of the GDP in that area. Basically, it's the relationship between how much a region gets from the state against how much they contribute.
There is a marked variation, from 34.1% in the South East of England to 62.7% in Northern Ireland.
Scotland, I notice, has similar levels of public spending as a proportion of GDP to North West England and less than Wales and the North East of England.
Overall public expenditure for the UK is at 43% of GDP, having risen from 39% in 2001/2.
An explanation for the variation is that areas with, for example, high levels of worklessness and poor health will receive more state help than less deprived regions. But the economists at Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), to whom I express thanks for the original data, are anxious about what our map reveals:
"Parts of the UK have become so dependent on public spending that it can crowd out private enterprise in these regions and countries. It is partly a chicken and egg situation - public spending in these regions is high because they are doing less well economically, but on the other hand a high public spending share can make a revival of the private sector difficult to achieve. And the latest data suggests that this problem is getting worse."
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Another hugely flawed analysis which will used by State-to-be-London to argue that it gives much and takes little.
Perhaps it would be a little more illuminating if the analysis took account of the way in which the City and our large corporations move everyone's money (pensions, savings etc) to London and artificially inflate the 'local' GDP.
Perhaps also, the analysis could do something useful with the data and suggest a regional development strategy, instead of one which sucks everything into the South East, whch could increase local GDP across the country.
Sadly I suspect nothing will come of this as our London-centric world view is too dominant - with the effect that the rest of country is actively denied investment (London gets crossrail, other Cities get nothing for example) and then blamed for being a leach on the London economy and not meeting all manner of targets
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"An explanation for the variation is that areas with, for example, high levels of worklessness and poor health will receive more state help than less deprived regions."
Another explanation - and the true one - is that Labour has spent all of the UK's money on its heartlands over the last ten years. South-East England is last for spending on education and healthcare, last on spending for road maintenance, and all because it chooses not to vote Labour.
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At last! Im Scottish and have been waiting for something like which breaks england down into it's economic regions for ages. Hopefully it will help tabloid readers in the south-east understand that Scots are not 'subsidy-junkies' anymore than people in the north-east and north-west. Also simply stating 'Scotland gets more public spending per person than England' dosen't make much sense as the two countries arent really similar enough to be compared effectively.
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The map suggests that only 46.76% of GDP is spent within the UK. Where exactly does the balance 53.24% go?
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It is not what is spent, it is the return the country gets for that spending.
If the benefit of this spending was evident then there would be few complaints about it.
This country faces the serious issues which require the spending in the first place but all we seem to achieve is a never-ending squabble over who gets what and how much.
We need to focus on solving the problems. If there is not the will or the capability to solve the problems then we should not be spending the money in the first place.
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> The map suggests that only 46.76% of GDP is spent within the UK.
> Where exactly does the balance 53.24% go?
It means the goverment spends 46.76% of our earnings, and we get 53.24% for ourselves. Soon the state will spend more of our money than we do.
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Ref 1. grahamew
Look a little closer at the map the City and all its financial servces are in London
The South East has the lowest percenatge and just why is East Anglia supporting Scotland.. No Pension funds there.
Costs are also a lot higher in London and the SE than in Scotland and the North.
Suggests the money tends to flow to the Labour Strongs.
Interesting that public spending can crowd out private enterprise.
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So now can the Scottish Nationalists stop whinging that they contribute more and receive less? Both sides fiddle the statistics for their own cause and it's just annoying listening to Unionists and Nationalists lie now
Might be more helpful if we stopped lumping Scotland as one region - I know it's sparsely populated but surely the cities could have some definition
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Draw a line from the Severn estuary to the Humber Estuary and you can see the Northy/South divide isn't fictional. Would be interesting to super-impose the colours of the political parties, in power in each contiency on it too! Could you do that BBC?
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What a strange way to present this information. GVA per head (which the Office of National Statistics now uses instead of GDP - it isn't clear where the CEBR figures come from) in London is 60% higher than, say, Yorkshire and Humber's figure. London gets more subsidy per head than the rest of the country, not less. And given the strength of the private sector (see the points made by grahamew above) the real subsidy per head is much above the headline figure.
You would almost think the Centre for Economics and Business Research had a political agenda.
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Another way to look at this information is to view it as an indicator of how public sector jobs are distributed. In order to save costs and redistribute employment successive governments have sought to relocate large departments to regions where the local economies are subject to high levels of unemployment.
The theory is that by creating jobs in these regions you stimulate the local economies as the employees' incomes filter into the local economies. Taking the North-East as an example, the numbers don't say "57% of local GDP is distributed in benefits", instead they're saying 57% of GDP is spent on public services such as the national headquarters of the DWP, the CSA and a very large NHS operation.
Unfortunately none of these organisations are known for being especially efficient, or good value to the taxpayers of the country.
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Lets save some tax, cut every region down to the lower levels! Then by taking out the overspend from the state, lower wages and benefits, regional or local wages not like say teachers paid much the same across the land, will let business find a cheaper place to operate in, spreading the self sufficiency around. Saving us ALL a huge chunk of tax.
GDP, how fast the hamster is running in the wheel not how happy it is!
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