Treasury Control
| Published date | 01 February 1957 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1957.tb00861.x |
| Date | 01 February 1957 |
| Author | S. E. Finer |
| Subject Matter | Notes and Review Articles |
NOTES
AND
REVIEW ARTICLES
TREASURY
CONTROL’
S.
E.
FINER
University College
01
North
Stnffordshire
Treasrrry Control
is
not a treatise
on
British budgetary methods and not even a critique
of Treasury practice. It is an essay, whose limited purpose is to describe the way in which
the Treasury goes about the business of co-ordinating departmental policies which have a
financial
or
an economic bearing. Important aspects of Treasury control such as establish-
ments, and
0.
&
M.,
are not dealt with in detail, nor does the author describe the Treasury’s
important part in standardizing common departmental practices, such as regional
boun-
daries
or
the terms of contracts. Even in the author’s chosen fields of finance and economics
he is only concerned with details to the extent that this helps to appraise the Treasury
manner and approach. But within these limits Professor Beer has produced a most enlighten-
ing and, indeed, indispensable work. Lean and economical, almost laconic, in style, it
evidences an uncommonly sensitive understanding and perceptiveness.
Part
I
is a brief description
of
the Treasury’s current organization. The second part deals
with the ‘classical’ field of Treasury co-ordination, the field of departmental spending.
Part
111
goes
on
to describe the Treasury’s brand new duty
of
co-ordinating economic
activities through its central economic planning staff. Part
IV,
by way
of
a conclusion, seeks
to pin down the elusive concept of ‘control’ and to explain its character.
Part
I1
(the treatment
of
financial co-ordination)
is
a
subtle picture
of
that Treasury-
department relationship which Sir Edward Bridges was at such pains to describe and defend
before the Public Accounts Committee in
1951.
Sir Edward had gone to some length to
contrast the Treasury’s ‘style’ before
1920
and after that date. Before
1920
(in
his view) the
Treasury was ‘a watch-dog looking out for the marauding activities
of
public departments
with public money to spend, and trying to check their extravagances’.
In
those days the
finance officer was regarded as ‘an outpost
of
the Treasury’ and ‘a spy in the enemy camp’.
After
1920
it became accepted that the accounting officer and the permanent head
of
a
department should be one and the same person. This was part
of
a new conception which
looked upon the Treasury and the spending department from the Permanent Secretaries
down, including especially Principal Finance and Establishment Officers, as
a
team co-
operating with one another to get the maximum efficiency and economy. There was in short
a
move towards devolving responsibility, where, as the Treasury memorandum put it:
‘Treasury control cannot and should not concentrate on the meticulous control
of
expen
diture
in
detailed fields
of
administration. That is something within the department’s own
sphere of responsibility.’ The new pattern, which is the current pattern, is illustrated by
Professor Beer as he successively describes the methods by which the Treasury exerts its
‘day-to-day’ control over new expenditure, its participation in the making of new policy
and legislation, and its grand review of departmental spending at the time of the annual
estimates.
In Part
111
Professor Beer
is
concerned to show that this pattern
of
devolution which the
Treasury worked out
in
the field
of
establishments and in departmental spending is the
one
that has been applied to the Treasury’s new duty of co-ordinating economic affairs.
TREASURY CONTROL.
By
SAMUEL
H,
BEER.
(Oxford,
Clnrendon Press: London,
Geoffrey Cirmherlege.
Pp.
155.
15s.)
Polltlcal
Studles,
Vol.
V,
No.
1
(1957,
79-89).
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