Same old BS. England props up Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. How about London props up the whole of the UK. £1 in every £5 comes from London.
London's taxes prop up the rest of the UK: One pound in every five earned in the capital funds the rest of the country | This is Money
Obviously more tax is going to be raised in England. There are 53.5 million people living in England. 5.3 million in Scotland, 3.1 million in Wales and 1.8 million in NI. Pretty obvious who's going to raise the most tax.
Public service spending (2012/13) per head of population: £10,876 for NI, £10,152 for Scotland, £9,709 for Wales and £8,529 for England. Let's remember that it is more cost effective to provide PSS in areas of higher population concentrations such as large cities than it is with more rural locations. England has by far the highest number of large city and urban populations. So by the very virtue of Wales, Scotland and NI having much smaller dispersed populations the figures are just figures and have very little bearing on what is given to who.
Disposable income per household (2012/13): England £17,066, Scotland £16,267, Wales £14,623 and NI £13,902. So another reason for less tax being raised in Wales, the population doesn't earn that much.
Economic activity in various parts of the UK tend to wax and wane. London it seems produces almost 20% of GDP. Should all of that be spent in London. Many no doubt, will argue that that is exactly what is happening.
Wales has not always held out it's begging bowl, indeed at one time is was producing for wealth for the UK than London, or indeed many parts of the UK. Almost 40% of the worlds coal exports were sent from the port of Cardiff. Swansea, Barry, Penarth and Newport also exported vast amounts of coal, sending the percentage of exported coal to around 70%. Swansea was also responsible for 55% of the total world production of copper. Merthyr Tydfil supplied 40% of the UK's iron. Wales did for well over a century provide an extremely valuable asset to the UK treasury.
Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland is not being subsidised by England. We are all part of the United Kingdom, dependent on each other and each part is important to each other and to suggest that these countries goes begging to it's richer neighbour is not a constructive argument and almost led to the break up of the Union.