Tony Prosser, The Economic Constitution, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, xviii + 277 pp, hb, £60.00.
| Published date | 01 September 2015 |
| Author | Colin Scott |
| Date | 01 September 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12149 |
Having said that, The ‘New’ Public Benefit Requirement is an important book.
There can be no doubt that charity law and regulation in England and Wales has,
since 2006, been cause for profound concern, having regard to the value of the
charity sector to public life in that jurisdiction, proper ways to formulate and
deliver public policy objectives, and the rule of law itself. Synge’s book shows us
many of the reasons why, and does so with admirable clarity of aim and attention
to detail. As the Commission finally emerges from the glare of the intense public
scrutiny to which it has been subjected in recent years, and reorients itself –
within the constraints of its current budget – to be an effective regulator for the
future, it is to be hoped that this book might represent the last word on a sorry
episode in the long history of English charity law. But even more, it is to be
hoped that the book will serve as a constant reminder to those who would
manipulate that venerable body of law in the service of one or another political
agenda of the costs entailed in doing so.
Matthew Harding*
Tony Prosser,The Economic Constitution, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2014, xviii + 277 pp, hb, £60.00.
In a remarkable series of books published over the last two decades, Tony Prosser
has systematically engaged with the challenge of understanding the public law
dimension of the British economy. These volumes have addressed the public law
dimensions of public enterprises, privatisation, regulation of network industries,
the application of competition law to public services, and regulation of social and
economic activity. In his latest book, The Economic Constitution, Prosser draws on
the analytical approach developed in the study of what are, to some, more
marginal areas, to tackle the core of state activity directly. He casts this project as
being constitutional in character, that is to say being concerned with the allo-
cation and control of the economic and financial responsibilities of central state
actors in the UK. The inspiration for the constitutional approach derives from
ways of thinking about such governance in other EU member states, notably
Germany and Italy, and also at the level of the EU itself. Prosser’s project is to
use this lens to map and then to evaluate the economic and financial practices of
government in the UK. It is not, however, a narrow public law account. Rather
it is grounded in the wider political economy literature which considers the
relations between state and economy and also the burgeoning literature on
regulatory governance, which is increasingly applied to the challenge of regu-
lating government itself.
The case is persuasively made that the importance of expenditure to contem-
porary government and its cross-Whitehall mandate makes the Treasury the
*University of Melbourne.
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© 2015 The Author. The Modern Law Review © 2015 The Modern Law Review Limited.
890 (2015) 78(5) MLR 883–911
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