Professor Congdon - Letter To The Times - NOT Published. Why not?

Sir,

The Foreign Minister of Poland, Radek Sikorski, has missed out a nought. He says (“Seven EU myths you should never believe”, Sept 25) that the UK’s annual net contribution to the European Union’s finances is £8 billion - £9 billion, which – in his words – “is less than £15 per UK citizen”. His thinking seems to be that dividing £9 billion by a UK population figure of 60 million gives £15. Well, actually, no. It gives £150 per citizen.
Let us try a little harder. According to the Office for National Statistics website, the official UK balance-of-payments statistics were last updated on August 16. They show that in the year to the first quarter of 2012 the UK ran a deficit on current transfers with the EU27 of £13.9 billion. Current transfers are dominated by payments, predominantly between the UK Government and the EU institutions, arising from our EU membership. The £13.9 billion figure was much more than in the calendar years 2009 (£6.0b.) and 2010 (£10.1 billion), which Mr. Sikorski may have had in mind with his suggestion of “£8 billion - £9 billion”. The sharp rise in recent quarters is partly attributable to extra payments that the UK is now making to boost the EU’s regional development budget, of which Poland is the principal beneficiary.
The UK’s population today is usually put at “over 62 million”, with significant growth in the last decade. That growth has been largely due to the then Labour Government’s decision to open our borders to immigrants from eight Eastern European countries on their accession to the EU in 2004. (Official estimates are that in the year to September 2011 654,000 Polish nationals were resident in the UK.) At any rate, if we divide £13.9 billion by 62 million, we arrive at a figure of £224 per citizen.
Let me add that I am in favour of our country being friendly and hospitable to Polish visitors, and that I welcome Mr. Sikorski’s contribution to our national debate on EU membership. But that does not mean we can overlook the apparently weak grasp of elementary arithmetic in the Polish Foreign Ministry.

 Professor Tim Congdon CBE

Economics Spokesman, UK Independence Party

PS. The Express got the stats right!
Time to stop buying The Times, methinks.