Coping with Difficulty: the Treasury and public expenditure, 1976–89

Abstract

This article asserts that the Treasury has experienced continual difficulty since 1976 in controlling public expenditure, and in achieving the objectives set by successive governments. It has responded to those difficulties by modifying the control system (PES) and initiating a variety of other ‘coping strategies’. These have helped it to manage and relieve some of the pressures to spend, and to limit the damage to its own credibility and that of the government of the day.