how much interest does the uk pay on its national debt
United Kingdom national debt As of Q1 (the first quarter of) 2015, UK government debt amounted to £1.56 trillion, or 81.58% of total GDP, at which time the annual cost of servicing (paying the interest) the public debt amounted to around £43 billion (which is roughly 3% of GDP or 8% of UK government tax income). Approximately a third of this debt is owned by the British government due to the Bank of England's quantitative easing programme, so approximately 1/3 of the cost of servicing the debt is paid by the government to itself, reducing the annual servicing cost to approximately £30 billion (approx 2% of GDP, approx 5% of UK government tax income).