Welfare
21.3% · £275.20bn national · often questioned
Social Protection excluding State Pensions — Universal Credit, disability and incapacity benefits, child benefit, housing benefit, tax credits.
scaled
Health
20.9% · £270.03bn national · often questioned
NHS England, NHS Scotland/Wales/NI block grants, public health, health research and arm's-length bodies.
scaled
State Pensions
11.9% · £153.75bn national
Basic and new State Pension paid to people over the State Pension age. Indexed by the triple lock.
scaled
National Debt Interest
10.8% · £139.54bn national · often questioned
Interest paid on the national debt — gilts, Treasury bills, NS&I products. Sensitive to inflation via index-linked gilts.
scaled
Education
10.3% · £133.08bn national
Schools, sixth forms, further education, universities (teaching grant, tuition fee subsidies), apprenticeships, early years.
scaled
Defence
5.5% · £71.06bn national
Armed forces personnel, equipment, operations, intelligence services, defence procurement.
scaled
Public Order & Safety
4.4% · £56.85bn national · often questioned
Police forces, courts, prisons, fire and rescue, immigration enforcement, asylum support.
scaled
Transport
4.0% · £51.68bn national
Roads, rail (including HS2 and operating subsidies), buses, aviation regulation, active travel.
scaled
Business & Industry
3.5% · £45.22bn national
R&D investment, industrial strategy, support for SMEs, energy/utility subsidies, regional development.
scaled
Government Administration
2.0% · £25.84bn national · often questioned
Civil service running costs across departments — staff, IT, accommodation, central functions.
scaled
Housing & Utilities
1.9% · £24.55bn national
Affordable housing programmes, homelessness support, water/waste regulation, street lighting.
scaled
Environment
1.5% · £19.38bn national
Environmental protection, flood defences, pollution control, waste management, biodiversity.
scaled
Culture
1.3% · £16.80bn national
Recreation, Culture & Religion — BBC licence fee revenue, museums, sport, arts councils, cultural heritage.
scaled
Overseas Aid
0.7% · £9.04bn national · often questioned
International development assistance — humanitarian aid, climate finance, multilateral contributions.
scaled
Outstanding EU Payments
0.1% · £1.29bn national
Residual financial settlement obligations to the EU under the Withdrawal Agreement, winding down to zero.
scaled
Source: HMRC — How public spending was calculated in your tax summary (Open Government Licence v3.0) · Functional analysis of UK Total Managed Expenditure based on PESA Chapter 5, with State Pensions split out from Social Protection per HMRC tax-summary methodology. Percentages sum to 100.1% in the published source — a 0.1% rounding artefact preserved as published.
What this ring isn’t showing you
The £ figures are your share of national spending — not what was spent on you specifically. There’s no published “NHS spent on you” figure for any individual; the calculation scales national totals pro-rata to your central tax. The 0.1% rounding drift you might see across the 15 lines is preserved as published in HMRC’s methodology.