Managing Public Expenditure

The UK medium-term budgetary framework introduced in 1997 addressed a number of weaknesses of the former regime, notably a bias against capital expenditure and, more generally, poor conditions for longerterm planning adversely affecting central government spending departments, local authorities and public enterprises. Departmental spending was indeed characterised by pronounced swings and capital spending was squeezed to very low levels. These weaknesses are considered the major cause for the poor performance of crucial public services. The present paper discusses the new budgetary framework and examines the scope for further improvement ...