Budgeting and governing for deficit reduction in the UK public sector: act 2 ‘the annual budget’

Ferry, L and Eckersley, P ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9048-8529, 2012. Budgeting and governing for deficit reduction in the UK public sector: act 2 ‘the annual budget’. Public Money & Management, 32 (2), pp. 119-126. ISSN 0954-0962

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Abstract

At the time of the 2010 General Election in the UK, all of the major political parties agreed that tackling the deficit was a priority. However, the affectivity towards this objective and rules were not agreed upon in terms of the timing and depth of necessary spending cuts. Nonetheless, within a year of taking office after the election, the Coalition Government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats set out a series of policies and initiatives at three junctures: the June 2010 “emergency” Budget, the October 2010 Spending Review and the March 2011 Budget.

The emergency Budget acted as a prologue for a more comprehensive programme of reductions in public spending. The Spending Review later that year set out the framework for further cuts over the medium term, and it can be considered as ‘Act One’ in Budgeting and Governing. ‘Act Two’ was the March 2011 Budget, which announced a further series of initiatives to reduce the public deficit and stimulate private sector growth.

The purpose of this paper is to briefly consider how the annual Budget process for resource allocation took place within the medium term planning framework of the Spending Review and the context of uncertain conditions. Therefore it considers ‘Act Two’ in the wider context of Act One, and finds that whilst the Spending Review provides a veneer of stability, changes to both departmental expenditure limits and annually managed expenditure within the Budget shift the underlying accounting measures of what is transparently being accomplished. The broader finding is therefore that annual Budgets are not constrained within the Spending Review framework, but are instead enablers of changing circumstances.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Public Money & Management
Creators:	Ferry, L. and Eckersley, P.
Publisher:	Routledge
Date:	2012
Volume:	32
Number:	2
ISSN:	0954-0962
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1080/09540962.2012.656017 DOI
Rights:	© 2012 the authors.
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Business School
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	27 Apr 2018 07:47
Last Modified:	27 Apr 2018 07:47
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/33365

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