The UK government's budget in 1996 was £ 315 billion. This pie chart shows what the government spent the money on, divided into ten categories .
The government spent most money, by far, on social security, £100 billion. This was almost twice as much as the next category, health, which cost £ 53 billion. The other half of the budget is spent on eight other things. One is transport which was £ 9 billion which is very important. Another one is law and order. They spent £ 17 billion on it. Also they spent £38 billion on education. On industry, agriculture and employment they spent £13 billion .They spent £ 22 billion on defence as well. Also they spent £ 23 billion on other expenditure. They spent on the last two £ 40 billion: on debt interest they spent £ 25 billion and on housing, heritage and environment £15 billion.
The most striking feature of the chart is that social security and health expenditure combined accounted for almost a half of the UK budget 1996.
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