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The Politics of Public Expenditure: American Theory and British Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Rudolf Klein
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Extract

Public expenditure is quite the most visible and quantifiable measure of government activity. It is therefore surprising that in Britain, as distinct from the United States, this area has been massively neglected by political scientists. This neglect is all the odder since public expenditure in Britain – comprehensively and conventionally defined to include all spending by central and local government, as well as capital investment by public corporations – has been increasing rapidly both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the national income: between the early 1960s and the middle 'seventies, it rose from just under two-fifths to almost three-fifths of the Gross National Product. So, in effect, the scope of political decision-making about the distribution of national resources has grown considerably, reflecting the changing balance between the political market and the economic market. The dynamics of this process are highly relevant for an understanding of the British political system.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , October 1976 , pp. 401 - 432
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 The only major study of public expenditure in Britain is by two economists: Peacock, Alan T. and Wiseman, Jack, The Growth of Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom (London: Oxford University Press, 1961).Google Scholar More recently the Centre for Studies in Social Policy has published analyses of the Public Expenditure White Papers whose focus of interest has, however, been on the content of spending decisions rather than on the factors shaping them: Klein, Rudolf et al. , Social Policy and Public Expenditure, 1974Google Scholar, and Klein, Rudolf, ed., Inflation and Priorities, 1975 (London: Centre for Studies in Social Policy, 1974 and 1975 respectively).Google Scholar

2 For the Treasury definition of public expenditure, see Public Expenditure White Papers: Handbook on Methodology (London: HMSO, 1972).Google Scholar

3 This literature is both vast and far from unanimous in its conclusions. But for a general review, see Fenton, John H. and Chamberlayne, Donald W., ‘The Literature Dealing with the Relationship between Political Processes, Socio-economic Conditions and Public Policies in the American States’, Polity, 1 (1968–1969), 388–404.Google Scholar For a more recent statement of his views by one of the main protagonists in the debate, see Dye, Thomas R., Understanding Public Policy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972).Google Scholar A ‘significant direct relationship between interparty competition and welfare expenditures’ has been claimed by Tompkins, Gary L., ‘A Causal Model of State Welfare Expenditures’, Journal of Politics, 11 (1975), p. 392–416.Google Scholar

4 Wilensky, Harold L., The Welfare State and Equality: Structural and Ideological Roots of Public Expenditure (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).Google Scholar This usefully complements, and also reviews, the previous literature on the subject, notably Pryor, Frederic L., Public Expenditures in Communist and Capitalist Nations (London: Allen and Unwin, 1968).Google Scholar

5 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Expenditure Trends in OECD Countries, 1960–1980 (Paris: OECD, 1972).Google Scholar The figures drawn from this report are used illustratively only: the OECD definition of government expenditure is different from the British Public Expenditure White Paper definition.

6 Perhaps the best known Marxist analysis is O'Connor, J., The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St Martin's Press, 1973).Google Scholar For a sympathetic British critique, see Cough, Ian, ‘State Expenditure in Advanced Capitalism’, New Left Review, 92 (1975), 53–92.Google Scholar

7 Easton, David, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965).Google Scholar

8 For example, Gough, , in ‘State Expenditure in Advanced Capitalism’Google Scholar, cites the growth of expenditure on police and prisons in Britain as an example of a repressive response to the ‘growing class and other antagonisms’. In fact, taking the period 1953–73, expenditure on the law, order and protective services went up by 106·3 per cent as against 265·6 per cent for education, 138·7 per cent for the National Health Service and 527·3 per cent for the personal social services.

9 King, Anthony, ‘Overload: Problems of Governing in the 1970s’, Political Studies, XXIII (1975), 284–96.Google Scholar

10 Downs, Anthony, ‘Why the Government Budget Is Too Small in a Democracy’, World Politics, XII (1960), sp.541–63, p. 542.Google Scholar See also the same author's An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957).Google Scholar For a contrasting analysis of the effects of party competition, see Brillan, Samuel, ‘The Economic Contradictions of Democracy’, British Journal of Political Science, V (1975), 129–59Google Scholar, where the argument is that this compelition will produce a budget lhat is too big because of ‘the lack of a budget constraint among voters’. Here the empirical assumption is the reverse of that made by Downs: i.e. that voters will be more aware of the benefits (real or imagined) of government activity than of the costs.

11 For a review of the evidence about the widespread ignorance about the impact even of direct taxation on personal incomes (let alone indirect taxation), see Brown, C. V. and Dawson, D. A., Personal Taxation, Incentives and Tax Reform (London: Political and Economic Planning, 1969).Google Scholar This might appear to support, in the British context, the Brittan as against the Downs view. However, the available, if rather thin, evidence suggests that the ignorance is symmetrical: i.e. that people are as ill-informed about the benefits they receive as they are about the taxes they pay. See Harris, Ralph and Seldon, Arthur, Choice in Welfare (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1965).Google Scholar The survey described in this study showed that ‘few people have an accurate impression of the value of the social benefits they receive’, and that over half underestimated the benefits they got (since there are severe problems about apportioning these benefits to particular households, it is difficult to give precise figures: however, a figure of 54 per cent would seem to be a fairly conservative interpretation of the results). For a theoretical discussion of the problem of lack of information, in the context of public expenditure, see Tullock, Gordon, Private Wants, Public Means (New York: Basic Books, 1970), p. 117–21.Google Scholar

12 This is to ignore the effect on behaviour of both altruism and the need for symbolic reassurance. Thus the former might explain why societies spend money looking after the mentally handicapped, and the latter might account for expenditure on such services as mountain rescue teams. Most of us are unlikely to benefit directly from either type of provision but we might feel happier as a result of living in what is visibly a ‘caring’ society. Empirical evidence on this point is sadly lacking; but in the only analysis I have been able to find of voting behaviour bearing directly on this question – Levy, Mickey, ‘Voting on California's Tax and Expenditure Limitation Initiative’, National Tax Journal, IV (1975), 427–35Google Scholar – the finding is that ‘the electorate behaves largely in accordance with narrow self-interest’.

13 The terms, though not the gloss on them, are of course from Hirschman, Albert O., Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970).Google Scholar

14 This concept, building on the work of Downs, has been developed by Breton, Albert in his ‘A Theory of the Demand for Public Goods’, Canadian Journal of Economic and Political Science, XXXII (1966), 455–67.Google Scholar

15 Downs, Anthony, Inside Bureaucracy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969)Google Scholar and Niskanen, William A., Bureaucracy and Representative Government (New York: Aldine-Atherton, 1971).Google Scholar

16 Pryor, , Public Expenditures in Communist and Capitalist Nations, p. 147.Google Scholar

17 A characteristically vague and all-embracing statement of policy aims can be taken from Treasury, Public Expenditure to 1978–79 (London: HMSO, Cmnd. 5879, 1975).Google Scholar Defining the objectives of the expenditure on health and personal social services, this states: ‘The aim of the programme is to provide, within the resources available, health and personal social services for the whole population, with particular emphasis on helping people who have special needs, such as the elderly, the mentally ill and handicapped and the young.’ This, clearly, can mean both everything and nothing and makes no specific commitment as to what services will be available, at what level and to whom, while yet raising expectations all round. Nor does it suggest any indicators which would show progress towards the achievement of the policy aims – unsurprisingly since such vague aims do not lend themselves to any sort of monitoring.

18 Pantaleoni, Maffeo, ‘Contribution to the Theory of the Distribution of Public Expenditure’ in Musgrave, Richard A. and Peacock, Alan T., eds., Classics in the Theory of Public Finance (London: Macmillan, 1964), pp. 16–28.Google Scholar

19 The quotation comes from Davis, Otto A., Dempster, M. A. H. and Wildavsky, Aaron, ‘A Theory of the Budgetary Process’, American Political Science Review, LX (1966), 529–42.Google Scholar The theory of incrementalism is most fully developed in Wildavsky, Aaron, The Politics of the Budgetary Process (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1964).Google Scholar

20 For the most sophisticated attempt to do so, see Davis, Otto A., Dempster, M. A. H. and Wildavsky, Aaron, ‘Towards a Predictive Theory of Government Expenditure: US Domestic Appropriations’, British Journal of Political Science, IV (1974), 419–52.Google Scholar It would be misleading to try to apply its findings to Britain if only because Congress plays a very different, and more active, role in the process than Parliament. However, it is worth noting its conclusion that ‘an examination of exogenous variables shows that, when they do exert an influence, it is over the most vulnerable agencies…For the most part, however, our agencies live in worlds of their own, worlds which are fully comprehensible to them but not yet to us.’ For the extent to which this conclusion may reflect the method of analysis, see below.

21 For a critique of the Davis, Dempster and Wildavsky approach along these lines, see Bailey, John J. and O'Connor, Robert J., ‘Operationalising Incrementalism: Measuring the Muddles’, Public Administration Review, XXXV (1975), 60–6.Google Scholar Reviewing the literature, these authors conclude that ‘it appears that incrementalism has expanded to the point where it is an open-ended concept, explaining everything with little rigor.’

22 Natchez, Peter B. and Bupp, Irvin C., ‘Policy and Priority in the Budgetary Process’, American Political Science Review, LXVII (1973), 951–63.Google Scholar Note their conclusion: ‘Priority setting in the federal bureaucracy resembles nineteenth century capitalism: priorities are established by aggressive entrepreneurs at the operating levels of government.’ See also, Wanat, John, ‘Bases of Budgetary Incrementalism’, American Political Science Review, LXVIII (1974), 1221–8.Google Scholar This criticizes the statistical foundations of the conclusion reached in 1966 by Davis, , Dempster, and Wildavsky, in ‘A Theory of the Budgetary Process’Google Scholar on the grounds that:

the correlations are of the same magnitude as those generated by random data under budgetary constraints. This is not to say that the Davis, Dempster and Wildavsky characterization of budgetary decision rules is inaccurate. It may very well be that those decision models are true representations of budgetary decision phenomena, but such a judgment cannot be made solely on the basis of high correlation coefficients.

23 Quoted in Bridges, Lord, The Treasury, 2nd edn. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966).Google Scholar

24 Peacock, and Wiseman, , Growth of Public Expenditure.Google Scholar This book most valuably provides constant-price series of public expenditure figures from 1792 to 1955. However, these are not always strictly comparable with those quoted elsewhere in this paper since they use a different price base (1900 prices) and also use a price index calculated separately for the various programme ingredients of Che total – something that it has not been possible to do for the tables based on the National Income and Expenditure Blue Book, desirable though this would be.

25 Peacock, and Wiseman, , Growth of Public Expenditure, p. xxiv.Google Scholar The displacement effect, the authors argue, has two aspects. On the one hand, ‘large-scale social disturbances, such as major wars’ make new, and higher, levels of taxation acceptable. On the other hand, they direct attention to new social problems and make new forms of social action acceptable to governments and public.

26 Wagner, Adolph, Finanzwissenschaft (Leipzig, 1890).Google Scholar Quoted in Peacock, and Wiseman, , Growth of Public Expenditure, pp. 17–20.Google Scholar

27 For example, Abel-Smith, B. and Titmuss, R. M., The Cost of the National Health Service (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956)Google Scholar seriously under-estimated the growth of spending on health, on the basis of using demographic data (though also warning that this might be an inadequate basis for forecasting). Similarly, W. Beckerman and Associates, The British Economy in 1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965)Google Scholar under-estimated the rate of growth in public expenditure, though it rightly anticipated an acceleration. Thus it assumed (p. 283) that public expenditure would rise to about 42 per cent of the national income in 1975. Partly this reflects, of course, an over-estimate of the growth in the national income as much as an underestimate of public spending growth rates.

28 One of the earliest post-war examples of this kind of calculation can be found in Paish, F. W. and Peacock, A. T., ‘Economics of Dependence (1952–82)’, Economica, XXI (1954), 279–99.Google Scholar

29 For a general review of trends in profitability, see Panic, M. and Close, R. E., ‘Profitability of British Manufacturing Industry’, Lloyds Bank Review, 109 (1973), 17–31.Google Scholar This argues that while there was indeed a decline in profitability in the 1960s – which was widely perceived as a crisis – this was part of a secular trend, not confined to Britain.

30 The analysis of this paper stops at 1973, for two reasons. First, the end of 1973 conveniently marks the end also of the Heath Conservative Government – which lingered on into the beginning of 1974 but cannot be held responsible for most of the expenditure decisions in that year. Second, the effects of the oil crisis – and the consequent world-wide inflation and recession – seem to me to mark the beginning of a new and still developing era for public expenditure policies everywhere, requiring separate analysis.

31 For the party rhetoric, see Craig, F. W. S., British General Election Manifestos 1900–1974 (London: Macmillan, 1975).Google Scholar The pattern shows some sign of convergence. For example, in the 1966 manifestos the Tories warned that ‘no programme worthy of this country can be cheap’, while Labour promised ‘urgent measures to stop the waste of taxpayer's money’. But in the 1970 election the Tories again put the emphasis on controlling government spending.

32 This decision risks, of course, another sort of distortion: it masks the ability of the Conservatives to increase civil expenditure in the post-Korean years when defence spending was declining and it was therefore possible to keep the total almost static. However, when the average annual rate of increase is re-calculated with 1951 as the base year, the main conclusions drawn in the text are not affected. Between 1951 and 1964 the rate was 3·34 per cent (as against 2·75 per cent for 1953–64), and between 1951 and 1957 it was 2·37 per cent (as against 0·26 per cent for 1953–57). Even the latter, quite considerable, difference leaves the pre- and post- Macmillan contrast intact, although less glaring. Choosing 1953 has the additional advantage of making it easier to construct time-series for individual programmes.

33 In interpreting these figures, care must be taken not to over-emphasize the importance of small differences – which might well reflect classification and book-keeping changes. Thus the 1964–70 Labour Government changed investment allowances to industry (which, being a tax concession, do not appear in the public expenditure statistics) into investment grants (which, being cash payments, do appear in these statistics). The succeeding Conservative Administration reversed this decision.

34 As my main sources for the post-war history of economic management, I have used Shonfield, Andrew, British Economic Policy since the War (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin, 1958)Google Scholar and Dow, J. C. R., The Management of the British Economy 1945–60 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965)Google Scholar for the 'fifties and, for the 'sixties, Brittan, Samuel, Steering the Economy (London: Macmillan, 1969).Google Scholar

35 For Macmillan's own account of this episode, see Macmillan, Harold, Riding the Storm (London: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 363–73Google Scholar; also, Winch, Donald, Economics and Policy (London: Collins/Fontana, 1972), pp. 301–2.Google Scholar

36 Treasury, New Policies for Public Spending (London: HMSO, Cmnd. 4515, 1970).Google Scholar

37 The most notorious example in British politics of the importance of economic theory determining public expenditure decisions is, of course, to be found in the history of the 1929–31 Labour Government. In effect, this fell because the Chancellor of the Exchequer (and the Treasury) rejected Keynesian economics and decided to take the conventional view that cutting spending was the right response to recession. See Skidelsky, Robert, Politicians and the Slump (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin, 1970).Google Scholar

38 Treasury, Public Expenditure in 1963–64 and 1967–68 (London: HMSO, Cmnd. 2235, 1963).Google Scholar

39 Treasury, Public Expenditure to 1978–79.Google Scholar

40 SirGoldman, Samuel, The Developing System of Public Expenditure Management and Control (London: HMSO, 1973).Google Scholar

41 Expenditure Committee, Session 1970–71, Third Report, Command Papers on Public Expenditure (London: HMSO, HC 545, 1971).Google Scholar Note the reply to Q. 263 of J. J. B. Hunt of the Treasury: ‘The percentage increase or decrease is clearly very interesting but it is not necessarily a measure of priority. If, for example, you take an entirely new programme, this will show a very big percentage increase. Alsp comparing some programmes you may have a relatively level figure, whereas within the programme there has been both a real increase and a real decrease.’

42 See the Treasury official quoted in Heclo, Hugh and Wildavsky, Aaron, The Private Government of Public Money (London: Macmillan, 1974), p. 239Google Scholar: ‘PESC has simply enforced an earlier tendency for each dog to get its share. Thus, each permanent secretary can test his virility for next year by seeing whether he got the required x plus percentage like everyone else.’ In what follows, I have also drawn on conversations with ex-civil servants and Treasury ministers who would not, however, thank me if I expressed my gratitude for their help by quoting them.

43 For an example of a Cabinet conflict over expenditure being resolved by increasing the previously agreed total, see Grossman, Richard, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, Vol. I (London: Hamish Hamilton and Jonathan Cape, 1975), pp. 555–6.Google Scholar Grossman wanted an extra £31 million for his department, housing, but the consequent Cabinet resistance was overcome by a decision not to take this sum away from any other ministry but to add it to the previously settled PESC total.

44 Treasury, Control of Public Expenditure (London: HMSO, Cmnd. 1432, 1961).Google Scholar Although chaired by Lord Plowden, the recommendations of this committee largely reflected the views of a Treasury official, Sir Richard ‘Otto’ Clarke. Note the emphasis in para. 18: ‘There is no doubt from the evidence that we have received that chopping and changing in Government expenditure policy is frustrating to efficiency and economy in the running of the public services…The experience of recent years, both in the Treasury and in the Departments, and in the wide circles of local government and nationalised industries outside them, is that short-term “economy campaigns” and “stop-and-go” are damaging to the real effectiveness of control of public expenditure.’ For a review of recent examples of ‘chopping and changing’, uninhibited by the PESC machinery, see: Expenditure Committee, Session 1972–73, Fifth Report, The White Paper Public Expenditure to 1976–77 (London: HMSO, HC 149, 1973), para. 13.Google Scholar

45 Public Expenditure White Papers: Handbook on Methodology. See paras. 65–71 for a definition of ‘volume terms’ and also the ‘relative price effect’.

46 Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain, 2nd edn. (London: Macmillan, 1974).Google Scholar

47 ‘The best taxes are such as are levied upon consumption, especially those of luxury; because such taxes are least felt by the people. They seem, in some measure, voluntary; since a man may chuse how far he will use the commodity which is taxed: they are paid gradually and insensibly: they naturally produce sobriety and frugality, if judiciously imposed: and being confounded with the natural price of the commodity, they are scarcely perceived by the consumers.’ Hume, David, ‘Of Taxes’, Essays, Literary, Moral and Political (London: Routledge, 1894), Essay xxx, pp. 203–7.Google Scholar

48 For the period before 1964, the figures come from the London and Cambridge Economic Service, The British Economy: Key Statistics 1900–1966 (London: The Times, n.d.).Google Scholar For subsequent years, the source (as for all public expenditure figures for calendar as distinct from financial years) is Central Statistical Office, National Income and Expenditure 1964–1974 (London: HMSO, 1975).Google Scholar The Blue Book groups rates under the heading of taxes on expenditure. From the point of view of political visibility it seems wrong, however, to include rates among indirect taxes so I have excluded them from the calculations made. If they were included among the direct taxes (as they should be, I believe, for the purposes of this analysis), the broad trends revealed would not be changed. I have, however, included national insurance contributions under direct taxation.

49 See fn. 11, above.

50 Peacock, and Wiseman, , Growth of Public ExpenditureGoogle Scholar, for instance, discuss the possibility that inflation might create the sort of social disturbance that is reflected in the ‘displacement effect’ but find none attributable to this source in the period covered by their analysis.

51 Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth, Report No. 1 (London: HMSO, Cmnd. 6171, 1975).Google Scholar

52 This is not to say that governments never cut taxes: the Conservatives did so after coming into office in 1970. But cutting taxes is not seen as an alternative to increasing expenditure: the two have gone together, with the resulting deficit being met by government borrowing – which rose sharply, as a proportion of total public expenditure, in the 1970s.

53 In support of this contention, it is possible to invoke the views of Lord Diamond who was Chief Secretary to the Treasury in the Labour Cabinet of 1964 to 1970 and as such the minister most directly concerned with the control of public expenditure:

It is very difficult indeed to halt an old-established programme; the forces making for its continuation seem to grow stronger with every year that passes. Programmes which, if they did not exist, would not secure ministerial approval will nevertheless be able to secure ministerial approval to their continuation, and departments tend to fight hard to maintain that continuity for reasons other than the intrinsic merits of the programme.

Diamond, Lord, Public Expenditure in Practice (London: Allen and Unwin, 1975), p. 92.Google Scholar

54 ‘Although everybody grumbles all the time about the burden of taxation – and a lively democracy requires a harmless safety valve like this for letting off steam – it is usually the case that bitter complaints about particular tax proposals are fairly short-lived. They represent the kind of pressures that governments have learnt to face’ (Diamond, Public Expenditure in Practice, p. 27).Google Scholar

55 The concentration may, of course, be geographical as well as interest-centered. Thus one of the most powerful arguments for securing funds for a particular industry may be that it is heavily concentrated in one particular place, where unemployment would have both political visibility and impact. This may help to explain, for example, government financial support (irrespective of political party) for Concorde, Rolls-Royce and the car industry.

56 Expenditure Committee, Session 1971–72, Seventh Report, Public Expenditure and Economic Management (London: HMSO, HC 450, 1972).Google Scholar See Memorandum by the Treasury ‘Public Expenditure and Demand on Real Resources’.

57 Select Committee on Procedure, Session 1968–69, First Report (London: HMSO, HC 410, 1969). See Memorandum by the Treasury ‘The Planning and Control of Public Expenditure’, and subsequent questioning of Sir William Armstrong and other Treasury officials.

58 For a critique of this emphasis on capital cuts, see Expenditure Committee, Session 1974–75, Ninth Report, The Public Expenditure Implications of the April, 1975Google Scholar, Budget (London: HMSO, HC 474, 1975).Google Scholar Note the reply of a Treasury official to Q. 49, where he was asked why successive governments preferred to make the public sector more labour intensive in relation to the available capital investment, while the private sector was moving in the opposite direction: ‘It may be that when faced with the practical problems of cutting expenditure, governments take into account similar factors.’

59 For a discussion of housing and inflation, see Craven, Edward, ‘Housing’Google Scholar in Klein, , ed., Inflation and Priorities, 1975.Google Scholar

60 Only broad programme categories, as shown in Table 2, are available from the Blue Books for the entire post-war period: the more detailed information provided by the Expenditure White Papers only starts in 1968–69. Work urgently requires doing to put the information available in the Blue Book, the Supply Estimates and local authority returns on a basis which would allow detailed expenditure comparisons for the entire post-war period. In the absence of such work, it may prove impossible to advance to a more sophisticated analysis of public expenditure patterns over time.

61 For example, attendance allowances first feature in the social security programme of the 1970 White Paper: Treasury, Public Expenditure 1969–70 to 1974–75 (London: HMSO, Cmnd. 4578, 1975).Google Scholar This provided for spending £3,000,000 in 1971/2 to rise to £10 million by 1974–75 (both at 1970–71 out-turn prices). In fact, the commitment having been once made – and the government having been seen to assume a new sort of responsibility – pressure to increase the scale and the scope of the policy grew rapidly and successfully. The 1975 White Paper, Treasury, Public Expenditure to 1978–79, shows that – at 1974 Survey prices – expenditure rose from £9,000,000 in 1971–72 to £61 million in 1974–75. Even so, it represented only 1 per cent of the total social security expenditure.

62 For the relevant statement of government policy, see Department of Education and Science, Education: a Framework for Expansion (London: HMSO, Cmnd. 5174, 1972).Google Scholar For an interpretation of this in public expenditure terms, see Barnes, Jack, ‘Schools’Google Scholar in Klein, Rudolf, ed., Inflation and Priorities, 1975.Google Scholar

63 Monsen, R. Joseph and Downs, Anthony, ‘Public Goods and Private States’, The Public Intérest, XXIII (1971), 64–76.Google Scholar

64 Cameron, David R. and Hofferbert, Richard I., ‘The Impact of Federalism on Education Finance: A Comparative Analysis’, European Journal of Political Research, 11 (1974), 225–58.Google Scholar

65 Outram, Quentin, The Significance of Public Expenditure Plans (London: Centre for Studies in Social Policy, 1975).Google Scholar

66 For a general review of this area, see Klein, Rudolf, ‘The Case for Elitism: Public Opinion and Public Policy’, The Political Quarterly, XLV (1974), 406–17.Google Scholar

67 The tenuous relationship between expenditure decisions and indicators of need or performance is best illustrated by the evidence of the Department of Health and Social Security in Expenditure Committee, Session 1971–72, Eighth Report, Relationship of Expenditure to Needs (London: HMSO, HC 515, 1972).Google Scholar

68 Klein, Rudolf, Martin Buxton and Quentin Outram, Constraints and Choices (London: Centre for Studies in Social Policy, 1976).Google Scholar