The Treasury and Whitehall: The Planning and Control of Public Expenditure, 1976-1993

Colin Thain and Maurice Wright
Additional contact information
Colin Thain: University of Ulster
Maurice Wright: University of Manchester

in OUP Catalogue from Oxford University Press

Abstract: The Treasury is at the heart of British Government, responsible for deciding how much to spend and on what. Both the institution and the public expenditure process are the focus of `The Treasury and Whitehall', a tour de force of contemporary policy analysis. Based on research undertaken with the cooperation of the Treasury and Whitehall departments, it shows how the key decisions of planning, allocating and controlling public expenditure are made. With unique access to treasury Expenditure Controllers and senior financial officials in the main spending departments, the book provides a detailed and authoritative account of the roles, relationships and inter-actions of the key players in Whitehall Expenditure Community as they confront each other in annual rituals of the Expenditure 'Survey'. Thain and Wright explain how the rules of the expenditure game were re-drawn in the 1980s in the relentless search for cuts, greater economy and efficiency in the design and delivery of public services, and the creation of a more enterprising administrative culture. The authors explain how and why the Treasury was rarely able to impose its constitutional authority to stem the tide of rising public expenditure through the turbulent years of the Thatcher and Major Governments. They show that the Treasury is locked into a system of mutually constrained power-relationships with the Whitehall departments, and obliged to negotiate discretionary authority to control their spending.

Date: 1995
ISBN: 9780198277842
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oxp:obooks:9780198277842

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://ukcatalogue.o ... uct/9780198277842.do

Access Statistics for this book

More books in OUP Catalogue from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Economics Book Marketing ().