The IPPR report out today (Fair shares? Barnett and the politics of expenditure) reveals some interesting figures. I haven't read through all of it yet - that can be tonight's bedtime reading.
I have found the table revealing that London has the most "identifiable public spending per head" at £5985 for 2007-2008. Wow, that's not something normally covered in our media.
The nations under the Barnett formula in the order they appear are: Northern Ireland (£5684), Scotland (£5676) and Wales (£5050).
The area receiving the least is East Midlands with a piddling £3820 per head. 18% less than the UK average.
Why should London get the most money per head? And do large areas of England get a raw deal?
Comments
John Ward / July 13 2008 11:26pm
I think London does merit special treatment, mainly because it is so expensive to live and work there that pay has to be higher, espcially with the very high commuting costs for staff coming into the capital to work.
Apart from that, although there will (as all governments have found down the years) a need for a certain amount of fine tuning, the huge differences in funding are not justified.
After the formula has been applied, there are extra "fiddle factors" on top, making the situation even more skewed. This has been (in recent years) designed to keep the Labour heartlands sweet, though as the report on Friday's Daily Politics showed, throwing extra money at areas such as Glasgow East achieves little if anything.
The fiddle factors currently takes some £28 million per year away from my own local council's funds, as an article entitled "Budget Scrutiny Part Deux" on my own 'blog shows (I can't post a link here, it seems).
Yes, whole areas of the country do indeed get a raw deal, but funding is also 'fiddled' on a council-by-council basis.
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