Parliament and public spending

The Select Committee on the Treasury & Civil Service has been lobbying for improvements in the Government's presentation of public expenditure information to Parliament At last, it looks as though changes will be made. But will the House of Commons — and, in particular, the select committees — be able to seize the opportunity?     

Book reviews

Public Sector Management Norman Flynn. Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead, UK (1990). 201 pp. £9.95. ISBN 0–7450–0594–2.

CIPFA Guide to the Community Charge R. Hale and C. Stewart (Eds). Longman, Harlow, UK (1990). Price £225. ISBN 0–582–063–54X.

Ethics in the British Civil Service Richard A. Chapman. Routledge, London ( 1988). pp. xix + 338. £30.     

Book reviews

Working with Developers in Urban Renewal

Francis Terry (Ed.). Public Finance Foundation London (1989). Discussion Paper 26, 78 pp. £10.00. ISBN 0 85299 445 1.

Councils in Conflict

S. Lansley, S. Goss and C. Wolmar. Macmillan, London (1989). x + 216 pp. £8.99. ISBN 0 333 454 138.

The Future of Housing Allowances

J. Hills, R. Berthoud and P. Kemp. Policy Studies Institute (1989). 71 pp. £5.95. ISBN 0 85374 461 0.     

Liquidity, credit creation and international banking : An econometric investigation

For the past 18 months the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee of the British House of Commons has been taking evidence from expert witnesses and interested parties concerning International Monetary Arrangements. An important concern of their work has been the inter-relationship between current problems in international bank lending and macroeconomic policies. Our presentation will review the opinions expressed in the Committee's Reports in the light of the econometric evidence we have obtained in our formal paper prepared for this conference. Basically we feel that the current problems facing the international banking system are in no small part due to the increased systematic risk introduced into the system by the macroeconomic policies followed by the industrial countries over the past decade, rather than simply to reckless and imprudent bank management. Further, our econometric evidence suggests that Eurocurrency flows may have a substantial effect on domestic liquidity, in contrast to the accepted view that such flows are unimportant. An underlying major theme of our paper concerns the importance of using modern econometric methods to shed light on current important problems of international financial interdependence.     

Facts & figures: Health care: Private and public spending,resources, need and provision; Privatisation: A further progress report

Labour Market Policy and Unemployment Insurance Anders Björklund, Robert Haveman, Robinson Hollister and Bertil Holmlund. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 205 pp. £25. 00. ISBN 0 19 828323 7.

Survey of Computer Fraud &; Abuse 1990 Audit Commission, Nicholson House, Lime Kiln Close, Stoke Gifford, Bristol BS12 6SU, UK. £7.50. (A supplement at £9.50 details all the individual cases used in compiling the report.)

Public Sector Financial Management H. M. Coombs and D. E. Jenkins. Chapman &; Hall, London (1991). x + 294 pp. £14.95. ISBN 0 412 38550 3.     

Book reviews

Public Debt Management: Theory and History. Edited by Rudiger Dornbusch and Mario Draghi. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1990). xix + 354 pp. £30.00. ISBN 0 521 39266 7.

Understanding the UK Economy Edited by P. Curwen. Macmillan, London (1990). xvii + 359 pp. £35.00. ISBN 0333 51104 2.

Politics and Public Policy in Scotland By Arthur Midwinter, Michael Keating and James Mitchell. Macmillan, London (1991). xii + 240 pp. £9.99. ISBN 0333 52265 6.     

Megaw and the public sector: A union response

One Civil Service union ‐ the Institute of Professional Civil Servants ‐ welcomed the Megaw Report on the grounds that it would help restore internal relativities. Unions representing the great majority of civil servants, however, came out strongly against it. The general secretaries of the Civil and Public Servants Association and the Society of Civil and Public Servants prepared a note for the TUC's public service committee on the implications of Megaw for the public sector as a whole. The following is based on that note.     

Efficiency in the civil service

Clarity in government publications is at the end of the rainbow. Obfuscation does not always come from jargon disguising complexity; on occasion, banality can be seen to be barely masking a vacuum.

We leave it to readers to judge which of those two caps fits the white paper on Efficiency in the Civil Service (Cmnd 8293). We give the text in the first column, together with a translation in the second. Our model for this, as it must be for any aspiring translator, is W.J.M. Mackenzie's incomparable rendering of an earlier white paper, Control of Public Expenditure (Cmnd 1432), which he first published in The Guardian of 25 May 1963.

We do, however, have one advantage over Mackenzie. Thanks to our resident Whitehall mole, we have been lucky enough to get a sight of what may well have formed the ‘Yes, Minister’ briefing for Lord Soames when he was considering presenting his white paper to the 1922 Committee. Extracts from this are printed in italics underneath our own translation. They provide a necessary gloss not only on what is contained in the white paper but also ‐ and perhaps more importantly ‐ on what has been left out.     

Three bags full,minister: How the London electricity board fixed tariffs for 1984/85

Not before time, the Government have been thinking how to restructure relations with the nationalised industries. A Treasury consultation paper (see also page 8) suggests that, among other measures, the Government are seeking to make board chairmen and members more ‘accountable’ ‐ in practice, more ‘sackable’ ‐ than at present. The following account of how one board reacted to a Treasury‐imposed policy decision ‐ the raising of electricity tariffs from 1 April 1984 ‐suggests that, if anything, boards need to be given greater, not less, protection against political interference.

Unhappy at the way the London Electricity Board agreed to the 2 per cent rise, the London Electricity Consultative Council, as was its right under the Electricity Act 1947, protested to the Electricity Council. This account is a summary of the evidence submitted by the Consultative Council at a formal hearing before the Electricity Council on 25 April 1984. It was given to us by Alex Henney, who was at the time chairman of the Consultative Council and ex‐officio member of the London Electricity Board. Later in the year, the Minister for Consumer Affairs declined to renew Henney's appointment as chairman of the Consultative Council, and refused to give reasons.

For further background to the tariff increase and the way in which it was imposed upon an unwilling industry, see Public Money, June 1984 page 41, and Anthony Harrison's article in Public Money, December 1984, and particularly pages 44–45.     

Facts & figures

Public sector pay is in a state of flux. In the Civil Service, under a regime of tight running cost controls, Departments have been obliged to look for flexible pay solutions to their specific recruitment and retention problems. Geographical pay variations and the introduction of performance pay each have apart to play in getting better value for money out of the paybill.     

Further reading

On the Dynamics of Growth and Debt By Casper van Ewijk Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991. viii + 220pp. ISBN 0 19 828346 6.

Hillier, B. (1991), The Macroeconomic Debate: Models of the Closed and Open Economy. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

Citizens, Consumers and Councils By John Gyford Macmillan, London, 1991. 215pp. Hard cover £35.00, ISBN 0 333 52534 5; paper cover £9.99, ISBN 0 333 52535 3.

Trapped in Poverty ? Labour‐Market Decisions in Low‐Income Households By Bill Jordan, Simon James, Helen Kay and Marcus Redley Routledge, London, 1992. 350 pp. £40.00.

Politics and Policy‐Making in Northern Ireland By Michael Connolly. Philip Allan, Hemel Hempstead, 1990. 178 pp.     

Facts & figures: Public sector pay: The last ten years

Next Steps: Improving Management in Government? Edited by Barry J. O'Toole and Grant Jordan (Dartmouth Publishing Company, Aldershot, 1995). £37.50. ISBN 1 855 21491 1.

The Myth of Democratic Failure. By Donald Wittman (University of Chicago Press, Chicago; distributed by John Wiley, Chichester, 1995). £23.95. ISBN 0 226 90422 9.

Managing Change in the New Public Sector. Edited by Roger Lovell (Pearson Professional, Southport, 1995). £32.50. ISBN 0 582 23893 5.     

Facts & figures

Financial Management in the NHS: a Manager's Handbook By H. Mellett, N. Marriott, S. Harris (Chapman and Hall, London, 1993), pp. xvii + 265. £29.50. ISBN 0 412 47320 8.

Competing for Quality—a Manager's Guide to Market Testing By Lynton Barker (Longman, Harlow, 1993). £38.50. ISBN 0 582 23688 6.

The Role of Chief Executives in Local Government By Janice Morphet (Longman, Harlow, 1993), pp. vi + 245. £29.95.     

Audit committee activity and agency costs

Menon and Williams indicate that many United States (US) over-the-counter (OTC) firms which form audit committees appear not to rely on them (cf. Menon, K., Williams, J.D. 1994. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, 13(2), 121–139). Reliance on audit committees appears to depend upon board composition, while audit committee activity is associated with firm size. In this paper, we compare the US experience and evidence on audit committees and monitoring with the position in the United Kingdom (UK), where there has been a steady growth in the number of major companies voluntarily forming audit committees over the last 15 years (Collier, P.A. 1996. Accounting, Business and Financial History 6(2), 121–140). We contend that the dataset is best analyzed using the Heckman procedure (cf. Heckman, J.A. 1979. Econometrica 47(1), 153–161) which captures the two stages of the decision on audit committee activity.Our results show little support from the UK data for the findings of Menon and Williams (cf. Menon and Williams, 1994. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy 13(2), 121–139). However, consistent with their agency theoretic perspective of monitoring, we found that high quality (Big Six) auditors, and to some degree leverage have a positive relationship with audit committee activity. Contrary to an agency theoretic expectation, we found that audit committee activity is reduced in firms that combine the role of chairman and chief executive. On the basis of this result we explored the impact of insiders (executive directors) and found that their presence on an audit committee had a significant negative impact on audit committee activity. This result suggests that the emphasis placed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) (Staff Report on Corporate Accountability, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1980, p. 491) and the Cadbury Committee (Committee on the Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance. 1992. Report of the Committee on the Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance. Gee, London) on the independence of audit committee members may be well founded.The reduction in audit committee activity that arises from the combination of the role of chairman and chief executive officer, and the presence of insiders on the audit committee, has important policy implications. Indeed, in the UK, both practices are the subject of recommendations in the Hampel Committee report Hampel Committee 1998. Committee on Corporate Governance. Gee, London.     

New development: Reviews of public sector performance—groundhog day?

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to canvass, and comment on, the main features of the recently completed Review of Governance, Performance and Accountability legislation/framework at the national level of government in Australia. Most of the Report’s 52 recommendations are procedural and will only be discussed when they may be of particular relevance in a broader context. The review reported on 4 September 2018. It continues the long line of reform reports conducted over the last 30 to 40 years. However, before the review was even completed, the Australian government announced (on 4 May 2018) another wide-ranging Independent Review of the Australian Public Service (APS), with a reference group of national and international experts having ‘diverse public and private sector experience’. Some suggested that the latter review should encompass the findings and recommendations of the former and be considered together, particularly as the announced chair was also a member of the earlier two-person review team. While no one would question the need for continuous learning, the main issue is about effective implementation of agreed recommendations that would improve performance and promote greater public confidence and trust in government.     

The implementation of a strategic state in a small country setting—the case of the ‘Scottish Approach’

ABSTRACT

This paper is a case study of the establishment of the Scottish Approach to Public Services. This strategic approach to public services was developed through three key activities: reorganization of the Scottish Government; creation of Scotland Performs and the National Performance Framework; and significant investment in leadership development. The research comprised of 11 élite interviews with both current and former civil servants within the Scottish Government. Interviews sought to develop an understanding of the nature and rationale for the Scottish Approach, to explore implementation of the Scottish Approach, and to posit what lasting impact may result from this form of ‘strategic state’ in Scotland. There is a major gap in the academic literature in terms of empirical studies of the strategic state and this paper addresses this gap by presenting the context and background to implementation of a strategic state in a small country setting.     

The role of annual reports in gender and class contradictions at general motors: 1917–1976

This paper argues that studies of female exploitation frequently pay too little attention to the broader social context; particularly alienation and crises in the development of late capitalism. This criticism applies with equal force to the domestic labor/housework studies and labor process studies and labor process studies where male domination is often advanced as the primary explanatory variable in accounting for female oppression. Even where labor process researchers have emphasized mediating affects on partiarchial influences (technology and control processes for instance; c.f. Milkman, Politics and Society, pp. 159–203, 1983), we argue that the broader context of alienated capitalist social relations is frequently understated.Female subordination under capitalism is traced to two primary sources in this study: First, that part of the labor process where the existence of female labor facilitates surplus value appropriation by playing the part of an “industrial reserve army” (sometimes “latent”, at other times “floating”). Second, in times of overproduction and underconsumption, capital has invented a consumerist ideology about women to help resolve its crisis of realizing surplus value. Only by seeing these different instances of female oppression as part of a larger, mutually reinforcing configuration of “instances” — emanating from capitalist social relations — are we likely to begin to adequately comprehend the resilience of social ideology concerning women and develop effective political and social counter-strategies.In this research, the above considerations are explored using evidence from a longitudinal study of General Motors where the annual reports are used to monitor the evolution of managerial ideology vis-a-vis women over some sixty years. We see in this study how the manner of women's exploitation changes with changes in the crises facing capitalism.The implications of the study are severalfold: Firwt, we see how a socially “unreflective” view of “management” and “management control systems” may lead to practices that are oppressive and exploitative. Second, we find “the labor process” to be an important but insufficient conceptual terrain for understanding women's oppression; instead we propose that the starting point of any analysis should be capitalist alienation. Third, this work has implications for the various controversies about class essentialism and the primacy of class. (Wright, New Left Review, pp. 11–36, 1983; Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis, 1979; Miliband, New Left Review, pp. 57–68, 1983; Tinker, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, pp. 1–20, 1984). as well as the relation between male domination and class oppression (Fox-Genovese, New Left Review, pp. 5–29, 1982, Goldelier, New Left Review, pp. 3–17, 1981) in that it examines the interplay between class and other forms of domination. Lastly, we see how annual reports may contribute to a general “world view” that aids social appropriation and domination.