The Unplanning of Public Expenditure: Recent Problems in Expenditure Planning and the Consequences of Cash Limits

Learning to live with public expenditure: politics and budgeting in britain since 1976

“…Else and Marshall noted that the essence of the planning system resource allocation was a casualty of the use of cash limits as a crude deflationary policy. (8) Thus, the introduction of cash limits marked a fundamental shift in political priorities regarding public sector budgeting. The essence of the Plowden report and PESC had been to secure the implementation of spending programmes in resource terms.…”

Public expenditure cuts in Britain and consumption sectoral cleavages1

“…Possible explanations for this paradox of greater Labour success in effecting spending cuts are that: a) A first round of cuts following decades of growth is marginally easier to implement than subsequent rounds. Several commentators have pointed out that the Labour government's cuts from 1975/76 to 1977/78 were predominantly in capital spending, which are politically easier t o make (Else and Marshall, 1981;Eltis, 1982); b) The contradictory tendency for selective cuts in some programmes to invariably result in increased spending in other programmes. For instance cuts in public sector employment inevitably reduce tax revenue and increase welfare expenditure ; c) Greater compliance by Labour local authorities to a Labour central government request for reductions in expenditure than to such a request from a Conservative central government (Duke and Edgell, 1984); and d) pressure from the electorate and sectional interests has arguably increased since 1979, partly in response to (a) above.…”