Most of the UK's official statistics are compiled by the ONS, the Office for National Statistics, which is an agency of HM Treasury. Each year, the ONS publishes The Pink Book: United Kingdom Balance of Payments.

The 2003 edition, with data for the whole of 2002, was published on the ONS website at www.statistics.gov in mid-October 2003, the paper version came out in mid-November 2003 and can sometimes be found in larger city libraries. The 2003 edition, which can also be downloaded free from the website, contains as usual, at Chapter 9 on page 114 of The Pink Book, a "Geographical Breakdown of Current Account".

This shows British exports ("credits" in the jargon), imports ("debits") and the resulting balances for the eleven years 1992-2002, analysed by country and by type of transaction: goods, services, income and transfers.

Separate lines, for "EU Institutions", show UK payments to (debits) and receipts from (credits) EU Institutions, and the resulting balances. "EU Institutions" comprise not just the "EU Budget" administered by the Commission, but in addition, a mish-mash of institutions, bodies and quangos like the European Parliament, the Court of Justice, the Central Bank, the Army-which-isn't-an-Army, the European Investment Bank and so on.

The latest figures show that over the ten-year period 1993-2002 inclusive, the UK paid over to EU Institutions... gross, cumulatively: £104 billion.

In those same ten years the UK received back, cumulatively: £64 billion.

So the UK's net contribution over that ten-year period was £40 billion, or an average of £4 billion per year.

The 2002 net contribution was £4.3 billion.

Assuming an average UK population over those ten years of 59 million, that works out at £678 as the average net contribution that every man, woman and child in the UK has paid over to "Brussels" in the last decade.

Putting it another way, the UK has paid over to Brussels, net, in every single one of the 3,652 days (including two leap years) of the last ten years, £11 million. Or, £77 million per week.

A brand-new, fully-equipped, state-of-the-art, 800-bed city-centre general hospital in the UK costs around £250 million. If, instead of paying that cumulative net contribution of £40 billion (ie £40,000 million) over to Brussels, the government had spent it on brand-new hospitals, we would now be enjoying the facilities of 160 of them, having in total 128,000 beds.
(Above excerpted from eurofacts, 5 December 2003.
Available for £28 payable to eurofacts, PO Box 119, Totnes, Devon, TQ9 7WA)

THE UK'S GROSS PAYMENTS TO THE EU: PER PERSON, PER HOUR and PER DAY
Sovereignty points out, in addition, that it could well be argued with justification that the gross contribution of £104 billion should be considered the total cost to the UK over this 10-year period.

This is because, although a proportion came back to us, it was not necessarily spent in ways we would approve, if we were outside the EU -- and often it was spent on sustaining EU projects which have damaging effects.

In which case, over this 10-year period, assuming the 59 million population figure above, our gross contributions work out at £28.5million every day, £1.2million every hour and £1,763 for every man, woman and child in Britain!