Abstract
The planning of public expenditure is subject to a fairly tight timetable of key dates when major decisions are taken about:
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the overall level of public expenditure;
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the distribution of spending between programmes;
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the communication of plans to Parliament.
In theory, each of these three decisions is constrained by the timetable to take place at, or no later than, a specific date; but in practice the planning process ensures that all three areas are more or less continuously under review. Moreover, the cycle for one planning year overlaps that for the preceding and following years.
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Notes and References
Reduced requirements may arise from: (i) increased efficiency; (ii) the lapsing of an activity, for example, the end of a research programme, or the abolition of a statute; (iii) privatisation, or contracting out, of a departmental activity; (iv) falling demand as population declines; (v) revised economic assumptions concerning prices and interest rates, etc, which affect demand-led programmes.
S. Jenkins, ‘The Star Chamber, PESC and the Cabinet’, Political Quarterly, vol. 56, no. 2, 1985. The 1984 Star Chamber was composed of Lord Whitelaw, the leader of the House (John Biffen), the Scottish Secretary (George Younger) and the Home Secretary (Leon Brittan).
All Departments now have such systems for reviewing objectives, inputs and outputs as a result of the Financial Management Initiative (FMI) which dates from 1982. Following the FMI departments introduced financial management accounting techniques. A useful review of the early years is contained in Progress in Financial Management in Government (London: HMSO, 1984) Cmnd. 9297. See also Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Co., Financial Management in the Public Sector, A Review 1979/84 (London: Peat Marwick Mitchell, 1985)
For example, both the 1983 and 1984 PEWPs were published in February; that for 1981 was published in March.
Department of the Environment, Paying for Local Government (London: HMSO, 1986) Cmnd. 9714, pp. 83–90 gives more detail, although very little flavour of the politically sensitive nature of the changes introduced during the 1980s.
Eighth Report from the Treasury and Civil Service Committee, Session 1980/81, Financing of the Nationalised Industries, (London: HMSO, 1981) HC. 348-I, volume I, p. xiii.
H. Heclo and A. Wildavsky, The Private Government of Public Money (London: Macmillan; 1981, 2nd edn), p. 91, where the technique is called the ‘beggar’s sores technique’.
C. Ponting, Whitehall: Tragedy and Farce (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1986). The quotation cited is from B. Castle, The Castle Diaries (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980), p. 596. Lord Bruce Gardyne, an ex-Treasury Minister, has observed: ‘What is too often overlooked though is the ingrained conviction of the Whitehall mandarins that the size of their respective departmental budgets is a matter of personal machismo. It doesn’t matter what the money is to be used for; its the amount of the money that matters’, Sunday Telegraph, 30 November 1986.
A. Likierman, ‘Squaring the Circle: Reconciling Predictive Uncertainty with the Control of Public Expenditure in the UK’, Policy and Politics, vol. 14, July 1986, p. 291.
An official version of this narrative may be consulted in Cabinet Office/HM Treasury, Government Accounting: Public Expenditure Survey (London: HMSO, 1985), prepared by Peter Saunders Associates, Liss Forest, Hants.
PESC is the Public Expenditure Survey Committee composed of the Principal Finance Officers of departments and chaired by a Treasury deputy secretary. It used to be very active in surveying the data forwarded by departments during the PES; now, it does not even rate a mention in official descriptions of the cycle. See HM Treasury, The Management of Public Spending (London: GEPG, 1986) paras 9–20.
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© 1987 Grahame Walshe
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Walshe, G. (1987). The Public Expenditure Planning Process. In: Planning Public Spending in the UK. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18606-8_3
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