CHARGING FOR PUBLIC SERVICES

Abstract

Our understanding of charges for public goods and services is currently deficient because of a lack of an empirically relevant political framework for analysing information and data about charges for public programmes. This paper analyses the context and practice of charging for programmes and reports evidence of the great variety of charges now employed by British government. The pattern shown cannot be explained by prescriptive theories of market efficiency or merit goods, as an effort to obtain signals independent of revenue, or by party differences; the pattern must be understood as an historical inheritance. To understand inherited commitments it is necessary to secure answers to nine questions in a paradigm of who pays what, when and how. Three steps that British government could take to improve knowledge of charges currently accounting for £9bn in public income are identified in the conclusion.