I've been replying to a rather amusing thread on the UKIP forum in which a couple of Scots have been trying to rubbish any argument that the Barnett Formula is unfair on England or that England subsidises Scotland and the rest of the UK.
I spent quite a while doing some maths and it seemed a shame to waste it, so here it is ...
The Barnett Formula is a sum which takes in factors such as population and calculates how much money Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should get over and above what England gets from central government.
According to the 2002-03 figures from HM Treasury, if you put 1 Englishman, 1 Scotsman, 1 Welshman and 1 Ulsterman together and added up their central government funding, the Englishman would receive 21.15% of the total. The Scotsman would receive 25.52% of the total, the Welshman 25.13% and the Ulsterman 28.19%. That's how the total figure is distributed to within 0.01%.
There are around 60 million people in the UK. That's 50,220,000 English people; 5,100,000 Scots; 3,000,000 Welsh and about 1,680,000 Northern Irish.
The average central government spending per year, per head in 2002-03 was ÂŁ5,453 for England; ÂŁ6,579 for Scotland; ÂŁ6,479 for Wales and ÂŁ7,267 for Northern Ireland.
How much was spent in total:
ÂŁ5,453 x 50,220,000 = ÂŁ273,849,660,000
ÂŁ6,579 x 5,100,000 = ÂŁ33,552,900,000
ÂŁ6,479 x 3,000,000 = ÂŁ19,437,000,000
ÂŁ7,267 x 1,680,000 = ÂŁ12,208,560,000
Total spent on the UK from central government funds was ÂŁ339,048,120,000.
The total amount spent (ÂŁ339,048,120,000) divided by the number of people in the UK (60,000,000) = ÂŁ5,650.80.
The average person in the UK will have paid approximately ÂŁ5,650.80 into the pot.
The average Englishman will receive ÂŁ5,453 out of the pot - 96.5% of what he paid.The average Scotsman will receive ÂŁ6,579 out of the pot - 116.43% of what he paid.These sums are all based on HM Treasury figures provided by the
CEP and Census information obtained directly from the Census Office website.