§ Mr. Matthew TaylorTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will estimate the gross budgetary cost to the Exchequer of the Treasury's funding matching available Objective 1 funding; how much EU funding would be unlocked each year over the planning period; and what the cost to UK public funds would be after taking account of the subsequent impact on the British budget rebate. [113607]
§ Mr. Andrew SmithEuropean Structural Funding is used alongside, and matched by, money already provided at the national and local level. It is a matter for regional partners to identify match funding from existing sources, both private and public. There are a wide range of existing Government programmes from which match funding can be drawn.
The total allocation to the new UK Objective 1 programmes for 2000–06 is around 4.7 billion euros. The annual allocations profile is likely to be broadly flat. It is not yet possible to determine what the resulting annual expenditure profile will be.
The effect of the UK abatement is, broadly, to refund around two thirds of the difference between the UK's gross contributions to and receipts from the EC Budget. The size of the abatement for a particular year can only be determined once overall EC expenditure for that year is known. Latest forecasts for the UK's net contributions to the EC Budget up to 2001–02 are contained in the 1999 pre-Budget Report (Cm 4479).