6 ms·

The UK is a net payer to the EU. For instance in 2015 alone, UK's net payment to the EU was about 8.5 billion pounds. So after the Brexit there will be more th

The UK is a net payer to the EU. For instance in 2015 alone, UK's net payment to the EU was about 8.5 billion pounds. So after the Brexit there will be more than enough money to continue the research funding. But as you mention already, it is another question if the government will be wanting to pay it. But is this really such a bad thing? The difference will that instead of the EU, the UK itself will decide which of its research projects it wants to fund.

djaychela 10y ago
"More than enough money" (and certainly the figures I've seen people bandying about) assumes that the cost of accessing the EU market (which I think we will have to pay) would be zero. I think it will be a significant proportion of the amount we were paying (net) to the EU, and in addition there will be other costs which people are just starting to cotton onto as well. The main thing is that at the moment, we really have no idea at all what the financial costs will be - particularly of accessing the EU market - and until we do then a lot of this must hang in the balance.
- sievebrain 10y ago
  WTO max tariffs (worst case scenario) are 4%. But the currency has weaked by about 8%. So even if max tariffs are applied tomorrow, UK goods are still cheaper to buy in the EU than before! In practice, if the EU doesn't strike a deal with the UK (which it won't) then I think it will suffer more exits. Because the EU has spent years trying to sign free trade deals with America, Canada and other places. If it turns around and says "we will give those countries tariff-free access to our markets but not the UK" this will send a powerful message to all EU citizens that this is not an organisation with their best interests at heart.
  - SlashmanX 10y ago
    If they do give a deal to the UK wouldn't that trigger more exits? If countries see they can leave the EU and still get a trade deal they'd be more likely to leave than if they saw the UK get shafted (so to speak).
    - sievebrain 10y ago
      Yes, that's why the EU is doomed and will be gone within a decade no matter what they do now. It is a fundamentally unattractive entity. The people who run it have never even tried to combat rising anti-EU feeling across the continent, as they believe the EU is inevitable and unstoppable, so why bother trying to make it more popular. Now it's probably too late: they've become so gripped by groupthink they can't reform quickly enough even if they wanted to, hence the focus is now 100% on trying to make leaving as scary as possible vs trying to make staying in as attractive as possible. In the long run this is a failing strategy. The EU is unresponsive and so makes mistakes that upset local populations. In the UK it was migration policy. The latest was telling Spain and Portugal they'd be punished for breaking rules that France and Germany also break punishment free. That's not going down well. The combination of a retention policy based on fear rather than respect + a succession of local gaffes do not bode well for the future of the union.
      - lispm 10y ago
        Wait, the research program of the EU is doomed and unattractive? I thought discussion here was under the assumption that the UK wants to participate in exactly those research projects... > In the UK it was migration policy. It was the UK governments migration policy.
      - Radim 10y ago
        Yes, that's why the EU is doomed and will be gone within a decade no matter what they do now. "I give the Bolsheviks a year, two at most". Quote from a famous Czech movie [1] about the ill-fated Prague Spring, 1968 :-) But in fact, communism survived for more than another twenty years... My point: these things take longer than one would expect. Unlike logic, where a proven theorem takes its "logical effect" immediately, the politic process has massive inertia. The time gap between "result obvious and unavoidable" and "result effective" can be decades. I second your sentiment, but I'm afraid it will take much longer for the EU to fall apart. Just like with communism before (and about as "reformable"). I personally think it will take a generation, starting now -- especially in parts of the west that have to tread this glorious neo-marxist path for the first time. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDEsj5QEWwY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDEsj5QEWwY
  - teh 10y ago
    I've read many of your comments here and I'm not convinced you have a good understanding of how the EU works. [1] is a committee meeting that tries to establish how we could disentangle ourselves from the EU. It's very long but it's full of great info how the exit could work, and as a side-effect full of info how the EU itself works. Making a case from an uninformed POV is not convincing me. If you back up your statements with data and pointers I'll pay more attention! [1] http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/cb083c53-3998-4f3a-8eca-e114e3dbdf0b http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/cb083c53-3998-4f3a-...
    - sievebrain 10y ago
      What specifically do you have in mind? You've said I'm wrong but not given any examples. I tend to not argue from the basis of how the EU is supposed to work, because it tends to put its long-range vision ahead of following specific rules. See how the deficit rules are working out: France is allowed to break the rules "because it's France" (Juncker's words). To predict the behaviour of such an institution it's better to listen to what the leaders are saying and how they've acted before rather than trying to read the fine print.
      - teh 10y ago
        E.g. "in practice, if the EU doesn't strike a deal with the UK (which it won't) then I think it will suffer more exits." That is quite a bold statement that needs a lot of statements from people who can make these decisions to back it up. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
        sievebrain 10y ago
        Is it an extraordinary claim? The people who run the Commission have been saying explicitly they don't even want to start talking about a free trade deal with the UK until after the UK is fully out. There's no reason for this, they could easily run the talks in parallel, but they have no desire to do so. Now consider the extreme difficulty the EU faces in signing deals even when it wants to (will TTIP pass? won't it? I wouldn't bet on it either way), and adding these two things together makes any kind of TTIP or CETA like deal between EU and UK very unlikely. Will the EU suffer more exits? Well, anti-EU politicians (or at least very eurosceptic politicians) have been rising throughout Europe for some time now and some countries are quite exposed to mandatory tariffs on UK trade (the Netherlands, France, Germany). Once the UK stabilises and the fact that trade barriers cut in both directions sink in, there will be a lot of people asking why the EU is dragging its feet over a deal. To say there's no chance of further exits does not seem less extreme than saying there will be.
  - Oletros 10y ago
    > If it turns around and says "we will give those countries tariff-free access to our markets but not the UK" this will send a powerful message to all EU citizens that this is not an organisation with their best interests at heart. I think that you wanted to say that "this is not an organisation with UK best interests at heart. UK government has little sympathy in the rest of the EU
  - chimprich 10y ago
    UK goods may be cheaper to buy than before, but there's many problems with this. First, we're all significantly poorer. As individuals. Fuel, goods, foreign travel, etc. are all significantly more expensive. Second, what goods? We don't actually export much stuff so the benefits of being able to sell stuff cheaper isn't terribly attractive. Even if this did stimulate e.g. UK manufacturing in the long term, we're starting from a poor position and... Third, the stuff we do sell tends to be services or of the value-added variety -- all of which depends on imports, so much of any extra money we make will be swallowed up by increased costs. Fourth, even if we did sell more stuff, the money we made from it would be worth 8% less.
  - youngtaff 10y ago
    Didn't the EU's approach to Greece already send a message that the EU doesn't have EU citizen's best interests at heart? Greece is a country where the population were 'sacrificed' to bail out French and German bankers (if you look where the bailout funds actually went most never hit Greece)
tankenmate 10y ago
That whole £8.5b won't be retained by the UK though if it's economy continues to struggle with trade issues between itself and its largest trading partner, the EU.
nicktelford 10y ago
That's assuming tax revenue remains the same, which all economists agree will not be the case. Whether or not Brexit will boost public finances is entirely down to how much of an impact it'll have on the UK economy. No one knows what the impact will be, but almost everyone agrees that it will be negative... though no one agrees to what extent. So there's really two questions here: a) just how much more/less public money will be available? and, b) if there is more, how much of it will go to research? No one knows the answers to either question, not even the government. edit: a very quick back-of-envelope calculation based on the forecast tax receipts for 2014-2015 of 648.1bn[1]: 8.5bn makes up a whopping 1.31% of tax receipts. Unless I'm mistaken, tax receipts correlate strongly with the strength of the economy, so any more than a ~1.3% decline in the economy as a consequence of Brexit, would consume the "savings". [1]: http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn09.pdf http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn09.pdf
- gg97 10y ago
  " That's assuming tax revenue remains the same, which ALL economists agree will not be the case. " Jesus, am I reading this ? Talk about a bubble. You may read other publications than HN to widen your views. I love when american IT people try to teach nations who were around since more than a thousand year. Really, love it. Go ahead and tell us EU was a chance for Greece. Guys, there is more in life that the dollar, there is the people, culture, religions and traditions. Except a bundh of depressed unsocialized hypsters, nobody in his mind is ready to give that away for a global market of consumership, WE DO NOT CARE, WE LIVE. The european way of life is not all about money as the american dream, this is something you'll have to understand for good, and you do not have to impose your materialist vision of the world to every country of this planet, especially with bombs and firing drones. I said.
- arethuza 10y ago
  "That's assuming tax revenue remains the same" And it's assuming that a new government is inclined to take the money and give it to the kinds of projects that the EU used to give it to - I can think of a lot of reasons why that might not happen.
  - 10y ago
EliRivers 10y ago
"But is this really such a bad thing? The difference will that instead of the EU, the UK itself will decide which of its research projects it wants to fund." Speaking purely for myself, as a UK resident, I believe that the UK government will be significantly more populist and far more short-term in its thinking, and I expect to see research massively cut (with associated long-term damage) in favour of tax cuts and pandering. So in one man's view, this is such a bad thing.
chimprich 10y ago
I believe this is wrong for two reasons. Some projects are only viable at a super-national level, either because of cost or resources (such as access to specialised technical centres in other countries or a wider level of expertise). Brexit doesn't stop the UK contributing to such projects but it does make it significantly more difficult by withdrawing from the established structures in place. The other reason is that much of the net cost to the EU involves paying for the common legal and political platform that makes international trade much easier. It may superficially seem that the UK will save money but in practice it is highly likely (and according to a strong consensus of international experts) that removing access to these structures will have a strongly negative impact on the UK's trade. This is likely to be very bad for UK science.
programLyrique 10y ago
EU research funding is also a huge incentive for collaborative research between research groups in various European countries, pooling talents from all over Europe. Research needs international collaboration, and UK funding only would make it more difficult.
- FrojoS 10y ago
  In my experience, EU funding is often used to force research groups across Europe to 'collaborate'. Well at least on paper, since it's so much easier or even required to get funding if you propose 'pooling talent' and other buzz terms. Just as a sanity check: there is no reason (other than your funding agency stopping you) for researches with their own funding to collaborate across borders where and when they see fit. Btw, here in Switzerland the sky didn't fall either after the people voted to 'leave' (the free EU labor market). After all the doomsday talk, Swiss labs can still apply to EU grants. The only thing that has changed that the money that formerly took a detour to EU now goes directly from the Swiss government to the Swiss labs. Calm down people. Nothing gets eaten as hot as it gets cooked. Its of mutual benefit for almost everyone in Europe to continue free trade with Britain.
  - lispm 10y ago
    I think you painted a very rosy picture of the EU/Switzerland situation when it comes to research, which has nothing to do with the reality. Here in Germany we have locally funded research, research on the state level, research on the Bundesrepublik level, international research cooperations and EU research. All at the same time. No one forces scientists to 'collaborate'. > there is no reason (other than your funding agency stopping you) for researches with their own funding to collaborate across borders where and when they see fit. Countries in Europe want to see it coordinated and research pooled. Every government does that on a local level for its research budgets. The EU does that on a larger scale. Switzerland is a tiny country. CERN would not exist without outside money and collaborative research.
  - programLyrique 10y ago
    Actually, for Switzerland, Swiss labs cannot apply to all EU research grants now. And I think it's a temporary agreement, which may well be scraped quite soon, if Switzerland really implements the controls on immigration. See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/03/eu-swiss-single-market-access-no-free-movement-citizens https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/03/eu-swiss-singl... EPFL did not seem and does not seem so happy about the situation. > The only thing that has changed that the money that formerly took a detour to EU now goes directly from the Swiss government to the Swiss labs. Switzerland labs are actually performing very well, and get more money from the EU research budget than what Switzerland gives to the EU budget (net gain of CHF 219 millions according to http://www.sbfi.admin.ch/aktuell/medien/00483/00586/index.html?lang=en&msg-id=60389 http://www.sbfi.admin.ch/aktuell/medien/00483/00586/index.ht... ) International collaboration is beneficial: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexitvote/2015/12/05/debunking-the-myths-about-british-science-after-an-eu-exit/ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexitvote/2015/12/05/debunking-the-m... Yes, you can collaborate without a specific grant, but in my experience, it makes the collaboration easier.
BellsOnSunday 10y ago
> The UK is a net payer to the EU This is true in all areas except research funding. That's because researchers can take part in EU-funded projects (e.g. Horizon 2020) where the funding was awarded to a multi-national project team and so doesn't form part of the UK entitlement.

djaychela 10y ago

"More than enough money" (and certainly the figures I've seen people bandying about) assumes that the cost of accessing the EU market (which I think we will have to pay) would be zero. I think it will be a significant proportion of the amount we were paying (net) to the EU, and in addition there will be other costs which people are just starting to cotton onto as well. The main thing is that at the moment, we really have no idea at all what the financial costs will be - particularly of accessing the EU market - and until we do then a lot of this must hang in the balance.

sievebrain 10y ago
WTO max tariffs (worst case scenario) are 4%. But the currency has weaked by about 8%. So even if max tariffs are applied tomorrow, UK goods are still cheaper to buy in the EU than before! In practice, if the EU doesn't strike a deal with the UK (which it won't) then I think it will suffer more exits. Because the EU has spent years trying to sign free trade deals with America, Canada and other places. If it turns around and says "we will give those countries tariff-free access to our markets but not the UK" this will send a powerful message to all EU citizens that this is not an organisation with their best interests at heart.
- SlashmanX 10y ago
  If they do give a deal to the UK wouldn't that trigger more exits? If countries see they can leave the EU and still get a trade deal they'd be more likely to leave than if they saw the UK get shafted (so to speak).
  - sievebrain 10y ago
    Yes, that's why the EU is doomed and will be gone within a decade no matter what they do now. It is a fundamentally unattractive entity. The people who run it have never even tried to combat rising anti-EU feeling across the continent, as they believe the EU is inevitable and unstoppable, so why bother trying to make it more popular. Now it's probably too late: they've become so gripped by groupthink they can't reform quickly enough even if they wanted to, hence the focus is now 100% on trying to make leaving as scary as possible vs trying to make staying in as attractive as possible. In the long run this is a failing strategy. The EU is unresponsive and so makes mistakes that upset local populations. In the UK it was migration policy. The latest was telling Spain and Portugal they'd be punished for breaking rules that France and Germany also break punishment free. That's not going down well. The combination of a retention policy based on fear rather than respect + a succession of local gaffes do not bode well for the future of the union.
    - lispm 10y ago
      Wait, the research program of the EU is doomed and unattractive? I thought discussion here was under the assumption that the UK wants to participate in exactly those research projects... > In the UK it was migration policy. It was the UK governments migration policy.
    - Radim 10y ago
      Yes, that's why the EU is doomed and will be gone within a decade no matter what they do now. "I give the Bolsheviks a year, two at most". Quote from a famous Czech movie [1] about the ill-fated Prague Spring, 1968 :-) But in fact, communism survived for more than another twenty years... My point: these things take longer than one would expect. Unlike logic, where a proven theorem takes its "logical effect" immediately, the politic process has massive inertia. The time gap between "result obvious and unavoidable" and "result effective" can be decades. I second your sentiment, but I'm afraid it will take much longer for the EU to fall apart. Just like with communism before (and about as "reformable"). I personally think it will take a generation, starting now -- especially in parts of the west that have to tread this glorious neo-marxist path for the first time. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDEsj5QEWwY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDEsj5QEWwY
- teh 10y ago
  I've read many of your comments here and I'm not convinced you have a good understanding of how the EU works. [1] is a committee meeting that tries to establish how we could disentangle ourselves from the EU. It's very long but it's full of great info how the exit could work, and as a side-effect full of info how the EU itself works. Making a case from an uninformed POV is not convincing me. If you back up your statements with data and pointers I'll pay more attention! [1] http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/cb083c53-3998-4f3a-8eca-e114e3dbdf0b http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/cb083c53-3998-4f3a-...
  - sievebrain 10y ago
    What specifically do you have in mind? You've said I'm wrong but not given any examples. I tend to not argue from the basis of how the EU is supposed to work, because it tends to put its long-range vision ahead of following specific rules. See how the deficit rules are working out: France is allowed to break the rules "because it's France" (Juncker's words). To predict the behaviour of such an institution it's better to listen to what the leaders are saying and how they've acted before rather than trying to read the fine print.
    - teh 10y ago
      E.g. "in practice, if the EU doesn't strike a deal with the UK (which it won't) then I think it will suffer more exits." That is quite a bold statement that needs a lot of statements from people who can make these decisions to back it up. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
      - sievebrain 10y ago
        Is it an extraordinary claim? The people who run the Commission have been saying explicitly they don't even want to start talking about a free trade deal with the UK until after the UK is fully out. There's no reason for this, they could easily run the talks in parallel, but they have no desire to do so. Now consider the extreme difficulty the EU faces in signing deals even when it wants to (will TTIP pass? won't it? I wouldn't bet on it either way), and adding these two things together makes any kind of TTIP or CETA like deal between EU and UK very unlikely. Will the EU suffer more exits? Well, anti-EU politicians (or at least very eurosceptic politicians) have been rising throughout Europe for some time now and some countries are quite exposed to mandatory tariffs on UK trade (the Netherlands, France, Germany). Once the UK stabilises and the fact that trade barriers cut in both directions sink in, there will be a lot of people asking why the EU is dragging its feet over a deal. To say there's no chance of further exits does not seem less extreme than saying there will be.
- Oletros 10y ago
  > If it turns around and says "we will give those countries tariff-free access to our markets but not the UK" this will send a powerful message to all EU citizens that this is not an organisation with their best interests at heart. I think that you wanted to say that "this is not an organisation with UK best interests at heart. UK government has little sympathy in the rest of the EU
- chimprich 10y ago
  UK goods may be cheaper to buy than before, but there's many problems with this. First, we're all significantly poorer. As individuals. Fuel, goods, foreign travel, etc. are all significantly more expensive. Second, what goods? We don't actually export much stuff so the benefits of being able to sell stuff cheaper isn't terribly attractive. Even if this did stimulate e.g. UK manufacturing in the long term, we're starting from a poor position and... Third, the stuff we do sell tends to be services or of the value-added variety -- all of which depends on imports, so much of any extra money we make will be swallowed up by increased costs. Fourth, even if we did sell more stuff, the money we made from it would be worth 8% less.
- youngtaff 10y ago
  Didn't the EU's approach to Greece already send a message that the EU doesn't have EU citizen's best interests at heart? Greece is a country where the population were 'sacrificed' to bail out French and German bankers (if you look where the bailout funds actually went most never hit Greece)

tankenmate 10y ago

That whole £8.5b won't be retained by the UK though if it's economy continues to struggle with trade issues between itself and its largest trading partner, the EU.

nicktelford 10y ago

That's assuming tax revenue remains the same, which all economists agree will not be the case. Whether or not Brexit will boost public finances is entirely down to how much of an impact it'll have on the UK economy. No one knows what the impact will be, but almost everyone agrees that it will be negative... though no one agrees to what extent. So there's really two questions here: a) just how much more/less public money will be available? and, b) if there is more, how much of it will go to research? No one knows the answers to either question, not even the government. edit: a very quick back-of-envelope calculation based on the forecast tax receipts for 2014-2015 of 648.1bn[1]: 8.5bn makes up a whopping 1.31% of tax receipts. Unless I'm mistaken, tax receipts correlate strongly with the strength of the economy, so any more than a ~1.3% decline in the economy as a consequence of Brexit, would consume the "savings". [1]: http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn09.pdf http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn09.pdf

gg97 10y ago
" That's assuming tax revenue remains the same, which ALL economists agree will not be the case. " Jesus, am I reading this ? Talk about a bubble. You may read other publications than HN to widen your views. I love when american IT people try to teach nations who were around since more than a thousand year. Really, love it. Go ahead and tell us EU was a chance for Greece. Guys, there is more in life that the dollar, there is the people, culture, religions and traditions. Except a bundh of depressed unsocialized hypsters, nobody in his mind is ready to give that away for a global market of consumership, WE DO NOT CARE, WE LIVE. The european way of life is not all about money as the american dream, this is something you'll have to understand for good, and you do not have to impose your materialist vision of the world to every country of this planet, especially with bombs and firing drones. I said.
arethuza 10y ago
"That's assuming tax revenue remains the same" And it's assuming that a new government is inclined to take the money and give it to the kinds of projects that the EU used to give it to - I can think of a lot of reasons why that might not happen.
- 10y ago

EliRivers 10y ago

"But is this really such a bad thing? The difference will that instead of the EU, the UK itself will decide which of its research projects it wants to fund." Speaking purely for myself, as a UK resident, I believe that the UK government will be significantly more populist and far more short-term in its thinking, and I expect to see research massively cut (with associated long-term damage) in favour of tax cuts and pandering. So in one man's view, this is such a bad thing.

chimprich 10y ago

I believe this is wrong for two reasons. Some projects are only viable at a super-national level, either because of cost or resources (such as access to specialised technical centres in other countries or a wider level of expertise). Brexit doesn't stop the UK contributing to such projects but it does make it significantly more difficult by withdrawing from the established structures in place. The other reason is that much of the net cost to the EU involves paying for the common legal and political platform that makes international trade much easier. It may superficially seem that the UK will save money but in practice it is highly likely (and according to a strong consensus of international experts) that removing access to these structures will have a strongly negative impact on the UK's trade. This is likely to be very bad for UK science.

programLyrique 10y ago

EU research funding is also a huge incentive for collaborative research between research groups in various European countries, pooling talents from all over Europe. Research needs international collaboration, and UK funding only would make it more difficult.

FrojoS 10y ago
In my experience, EU funding is often used to force research groups across Europe to 'collaborate'. Well at least on paper, since it's so much easier or even required to get funding if you propose 'pooling talent' and other buzz terms. Just as a sanity check: there is no reason (other than your funding agency stopping you) for researches with their own funding to collaborate across borders where and when they see fit. Btw, here in Switzerland the sky didn't fall either after the people voted to 'leave' (the free EU labor market). After all the doomsday talk, Swiss labs can still apply to EU grants. The only thing that has changed that the money that formerly took a detour to EU now goes directly from the Swiss government to the Swiss labs. Calm down people. Nothing gets eaten as hot as it gets cooked. Its of mutual benefit for almost everyone in Europe to continue free trade with Britain.
- lispm 10y ago
  I think you painted a very rosy picture of the EU/Switzerland situation when it comes to research, which has nothing to do with the reality. Here in Germany we have locally funded research, research on the state level, research on the Bundesrepublik level, international research cooperations and EU research. All at the same time. No one forces scientists to 'collaborate'. > there is no reason (other than your funding agency stopping you) for researches with their own funding to collaborate across borders where and when they see fit. Countries in Europe want to see it coordinated and research pooled. Every government does that on a local level for its research budgets. The EU does that on a larger scale. Switzerland is a tiny country. CERN would not exist without outside money and collaborative research.
- programLyrique 10y ago
  Actually, for Switzerland, Swiss labs cannot apply to all EU research grants now. And I think it's a temporary agreement, which may well be scraped quite soon, if Switzerland really implements the controls on immigration. See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/03/eu-swiss-single-market-access-no-free-movement-citizens https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/03/eu-swiss-singl... EPFL did not seem and does not seem so happy about the situation. > The only thing that has changed that the money that formerly took a detour to EU now goes directly from the Swiss government to the Swiss labs. Switzerland labs are actually performing very well, and get more money from the EU research budget than what Switzerland gives to the EU budget (net gain of CHF 219 millions according to http://www.sbfi.admin.ch/aktuell/medien/00483/00586/index.html?lang=en&msg-id=60389 http://www.sbfi.admin.ch/aktuell/medien/00483/00586/index.ht... ) International collaboration is beneficial: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexitvote/2015/12/05/debunking-the-myths-about-british-science-after-an-eu-exit/ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexitvote/2015/12/05/debunking-the-m... Yes, you can collaborate without a specific grant, but in my experience, it makes the collaboration easier.

BellsOnSunday 10y ago

> The UK is a net payer to the EU This is true in all areas except research funding. That's because researchers can take part in EU-funded projects (e.g. Horizon 2020) where the funding was awarded to a multi-national project team and so doesn't form part of the UK entitlement.