State of Play: Summer 1964

Abstract

The four-year period from 1961 to 1964 is of great interest as showing the beginning of the impact of the growth of public expenditure in relation to resources from the low point reached in the second half of the 1950s. Public sector expenditure (including debt interest) was going up at about 7 1/2 per cent a year (in money): public sector receipts by about 7 per cent a year. There were, so to speak, four-and-ahalf Budgets — Mr Selwyn Lloyd’s of 1961 and 1962, Mr Maudling’s ‘mini-budgets’ of end-1962, and his Budgets of 1963 and 1964: they occupied one modern-style trade cycle, with unemployment at the beginning the same as at the end:

Table 1