NORTHERN Ireland has higher public spending per head than anywhere in Britain.
Experimental public-sector finance data from the Office of National Statistics shows that the north’s per person expenditure for the last financial year was £14,020.
The region with the lowest expenditure was the south east of England, at £10,580 per person.
The UK’s total public sector revenue for the financial year ending March 31 was £681.7 billion, which works out at around £10,470 per person or 36 per cent of total UK GDP.
Although Northern Ireland raised the least revenue of any UK region at £15.9bn, this equated to approximately £8,580 per person, which was not the lowest per-person total revenue.
The lowest per-person total revenue was in Wales at approximately £7,980.
Over the last two financial years, all UK regions saw an increase in their total revenue. However, this trend was the least pronounced in the north.
Northern Ireland’s revenue increased by £507 million in the year to the end of March, compared with London’s £6.4bn.
The north had the highest fiscal deficit per person at £5,438, while London had a per-person surplus of £3,068.
A fiscal deficit or surplus (known as the fiscal balance), is the gap between revenue raised (current receipts) and total spending (current expenditure plus net capital expenditure).
