Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the amount of direct private sector receipts from the EU was in 2014; and what the expected amount of direct private sector receipts from the EU is for 2015.

Neither the EU Commission nor HM Treasury publish a definitive figure for UK private sector receipts in isolation from total UK receipts. Private sector receipts may, however, be estimated by subtracting the OBR’s estimates for receipts to the UK public sector from total UK receipts published by the EU Commission. For all years up to 2013, this estimate has been detailed in the Technical Annex of HM Treasury’s European Finances White Paper, as shown in the table below. The below figure for 2014 can be estimated using the same methodology as in the White Paper.

The OBR do not publish a forecast of private sector receipts. As the EU Commission have not yet published total UK receipts for 2015, we are unable to provide an expected figure for private sector receipts in 2015.

The figure for total receipts is taken from Page 16, Table 3B of HM Treasury’s European Union Finances 2015, accessible at this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/483344/EU_finances_2015_final_web_09122015.pdf. The original data is from the European Commission’s Financial Report 2014 (available at this link: http://ec.europa.eu/budget/financialreport/2014/foreword/index_en.html), expressed in euros, and has been converted to sterling using the annual average exchange rate for that year.

The figure for public sector receipts is taken from Page 14, Table 3A of HM Treasury’s European Union Finances 2015, accessible at this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/483344/EU_finances_2015_final_web_09122015.pdf.