Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what the net fiscal transfers in public expenditure were for each region of the UK for each of the last five years.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.

The Lord Weir of Ballyholme

House of Lords

London

SW1A 0PW

19 July 2023

Dear Lord Weir,

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what the net fiscal transfers in public expenditure were for each region of the UK for each of the last five years (HL9356).

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes an annual article named Country and Regional Public Sector Finances [1], which provides regional estimates of public sector expenditure, revenue, and net fiscal balance. The ONS does not currently have any regional net fiscal transfer data available but does produce measurements of net fiscal balance.

The Country and Regional Public Sector Finances publication includes net fiscal balance information on an International Territorial Level 1 (ITL1) basis. Net fiscal balance measures the difference between public sector expenditure and public sector revenue - a negative net fiscal balance represents a surplus, meaning a country or region is receiving more in revenue than its expenditure. A positive net fiscal balance represents a deficit, meaning a country or region is undertaking more expenditure than it is receiving in revenue.

There are two different measures of net fiscal balance depending on the measure of tax revenue derived from North Sea oil and gas, one based on the geographic location of oil and gas producers shown in Table 1, and one based on population shown in Table 2. The two tables show the net fiscal balance by country and region using these two different methods.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Sir Ian Diamond

[1] Country and Regional Public Sector Finances

Table 1: Net fiscal balance by country and region in the UK between financial year ending (FYE) March 2018 and FYE March 2022, in £ millions. North Sea oil and gas revenue measured on a geographic basis.

Source: Country and Regional Public Sector Finances

Table 2: Net fiscal balance by country and region in the UK between financial year ending (FYE) March 2018 and FYE March 2022, in £ millions. North Sea oil and gas revenue measured on a population basis.

Source: Country and Regional Public Sector Finances