We spend £12.9 billion on the EU membership fee a year. So if we Brexit, where could the extra money go?
The raging debate surrounding Brexit always seems to come back to one thing: the £12.9 billion annual EU membership fee (after rebates).
But just imagine what we could do with the extra cash. What a difference such an annual boost could make to essentials like the National Health Service, education system and social welfare provision.
Well, if June’s referendum goes in favour of Britain leaving the European Union, that is exactly what may happen because this remarkable sum is what we pay every year in membership fees.
So how could we spend such a windfall? We’ve taken a look at three key areas of spending and how it balances out in relation to the benefits of EU membership.
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National Health Service
The NHS has been right at the centre of the EU membership fee debacle.
It has a budget of £115.6 billion for 2016-17 but while that might sound like a decent amount, it’s under pressure due to a combination of rising costs, an ageing population and an epidemic of long-term conditions.
The costs are eye-watering. A natural birth comes in at £1,824, an abdominal hernia repair is £2,281 and a hip replacement, of which there are 62,000 every year, sets the NHS back almost £9,000 each, according to health provider Benenden.
An increasing number of NHS providers are already facing financial difficulties so some of the EU membership fee could be channelled into the budget – or maybe even training some more junior doctors in order to ease everyone’s workload.
In 2011/12, 24% of trusts and foundation trusts overspent – but figures for 2014/15 suggest this is likely to increase to up to 50%, according to independent analysis by The King’s Fund.
Education
We could also use the cash to encourage more people to go into education – especially with a National Audit Office report revealing that teacher shortages are growing at a time when there are question marks over their qualifications.
The study also revealed that secondary school classes are being taught by teachers who don’t have a relevant post A-level qualification in their subject. In physics, the number of classes taught in this way rose from 21% to 28% between 2010 and 2014.
Then you have the teaching assistants. They’re crucial to the running of classrooms but get paid a meagre wage for their efforts – almost regardless of their experience. In fact, the average annual salary is less than £12,000.
Kevin Courtney, Deputy General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, is unimpressed with the situation:
“We have a serious teacher recruitment and retention crisis, a severe school place crisis, and a chronic lack of funding for schools which is leading to subjects being cut, school trips being cut and a reduction in resources,” he said.
Environment
More money could be put into flood defences to help tackle the regular devastation that hits areas across the UK every year. A survey by Greenpeace claims that 61% of people think the government is already spending too little on them.
A petition, launched by the organisation, along with Friends of the Earth and 350.org, has already been presented to Prime Minister David Cameron calling for more to be spent as well as an accelerated rollout of clean power.
It’s not only flood defences that could do with bolstering. Further planned cuts to the Environment Department coming into force over the next few years are already causing concern among interested organisations.
Charities and groups such as the RSPB have already warned that budget reductions could hit wildlife conservation, air quality and water pollution, as well as leading to thousands of redundancies.
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Complications
Of course, there are two sides to every story and George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, insists that leaving the EU would require a new set of agreements being made that could see us all paying a heavy price.
"Our GDP would be 6.2% lower, families would be £4,300 worse off and our tax receipts would face an annual £36 billion black hole," he said. "This is more than a third of the NHS budget and equivalent to 8p on the basic rate of income tax."
UK science gains competitive advantage from its close proximity and easy access to major facilities within Europe, according to the Earl of Selborne, Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Lords.
“The UK science community places a high value on the UK’s membership of the EU. Collaboration, funding, facilities and policy make EU membership a key part of the UK’s outstanding science base, and this report looks at these areas in detail.”
Figures support this argument too. While the UK contributed nearly £4.3 billion for EU research projects from 2007 to 2013, it received nearly £7 billion back over the same period, with the £2.7 billion excess equivalent to more than £300 million in research funds a year.
Then there is farming. Farmers receive payments under the Common Agricultural Policy with receipts from the EU budget for the financial year 2008/09 (the latest year for which data is available) broken down by the four UK nations.
Wales, which has a large agricultural sector, received £163 per head, while England received £52, according to Exiting the EU: impact in key UK policy areas, a House of Commons briefing paper.
Though a Brexit is an opportunity to ditch the hugely controversial Common Agricultural Policy, it’s unclear whether the rural parts of Britain would receive the same financial backing.
How about you- where do you think the EU membership fee would be better spent? Or do you think the EU is the best way to spend it? Let us know in the comments section below.
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