HM Treasury · Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2025, chapter 4: expenditure by function
Public order spending as a share of GDP
1.8%per cent of GDP
Public order spending as a share of GDP was 1.8% in the year ending March 2025, unchanged from the previous period (Year ending March 2024).
No change against Year ending March 2024 (previous period)
- HM Treasury rate
- Year ending March 2025
- published 17 July 2025
- Table 4.4
- row “3. Public order and safety”
- column “2024-25”
- cell value 1.8
Year ending March 2003 to Year ending March 2025
What this measures
Public sector spending on public order and safety as a percentage of GDP.
What this doesn’t measure
Spending in cash terms, or spending per resident.
Important caveat
PESA classifies spending by function using the UN COFOG framework, so "health" is every public body's spending on health services, not the Department of Health's budget, and "defence" follows COFOG rather than the NATO definition. Figures are outturn for the whole public sector including local government and public corporations. Cash figures rise with inflation; the real-terms table restates them at 2024-25 prices with the GDP deflator. Classification changes are footnoted in the table: student loans from 2011-12, Network Rail from 2011-12 and the treatment of EU transactions after 2020. Total managed expenditure includes accounting adjustments that are not allocated to any function.
Revision history
No period of this series has been revised since it was first ingested here. Revisions are recorded automatically when a later release publishes a different figure for the same period.
Source
- Publisher
- HM Treasury
- Publication
- Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2025, chapter 4: expenditure by function
- Release
- PESA 2025, published 17 July 2025
- Source file
- PESA_2025_CP_Chapter_4_tables.xlsx
- File SHA-256
- bc275bc1efed362ba3ed15fb27db010692caa879d201897dc5d64c46bc942570
- Retrieved
- 3 September 2026
- Sheet
- 4_4
- Table
- Table 4.4
- Row
- 3. Public order and safety
- Column
- 2024-25
- Cell value
- 1.8
- Geography
- United Kingdom
- Unit
- per cent of GDP
- API
- /api/metrics/spend_public_order_gdp · /series · /vintages
Government periods
Change during each government, from the level inherited to the last complete period before it left office. Describes the period; does not attribute cause.
| Conservative 2019–2024 | 1.5%Year ending March 2019 | 1.8%Year ending March 2024 | ↑ 20.0% |
| Conservative 2017–2019 | 1.5%Year ending March 2017 | 1.5%Year ending March 2019 | → 0.0% |
| Conservative 2015–2017 | 1.6%Year ending March 2015 | 1.5%Year ending March 2017 | ↓ 6.3% |
| Coalition 2010–2015 | 2.2%Year ending March 2010 | 1.6%Year ending March 2015 | ↓ 27.3% |
| Labour 2005–2010 | 2.1%Year ending March 2005 | 2.2%Year ending March 2010 | ↑ 4.8% |
- Release
- PESA 2025 · publication page
- Last updated
- 17 July 2025
- Next release expected
- Not yet announced (estimated from the usual cadence)