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EXPENDITURE IN THE ENGLISH REGIONS
In April 2002 Professor Iain McLean of Nuffield College, Oxford was asked to undertake a research project examining the quality of official data on government spending in the English regions and identifying methods that might be used to improve estimates of regional spending.
Professor McLean’s research examines the methods and results of the regional spending statistics for 2000-01 published in the Treasury’s annual publication ‘Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses’ (PESA), in 2002. These statistics take, as their starting point, known outturn data for total public spending and split this spending into spending that can be identified as benefiting individual regions and that which can't because it benefits the UK as a whole, such as defence. Total identified regional expenditure is then apportioned between regions to produce estimates of regional spending.
The research identifies various difficulties with departments' methods of apportioning spending between regions and estimates that these difficulties affected some 12% of departments’ returns underlying the statistics published in PESA 2002.
The report makes eleven recommendations aimed at improving the recording of regional spending data. It also finds that the research has already directly contributed to producing better estimates in PESA 2003.
Identifying the Flow of Domestic and European Expenditure into the English Regions - report ( Adobe Acrobat 2,550kb ) and summary ( Adobe Acrobat 81kb )
Updated 5 September 2003
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