The Machinery of Government

The object of this chapter is to explain the basic workings of government and administration, placing some emphasis on the bodies concerned with energy policy and expenditure. The Department of Energy will be considered at greater length in the following chapter, so only the machinery for controlling expenditure of government departments and the overall policy-making context will be described here. Expenditure and policy-making are two sides of the same coin, and the Treasury, though small in actual numbers of staff, exerts a great degree of control over departmental spending and policies. Several detailed accounts of the Treasury have been published, as befits its place at the centre of British government, thus it is not necessary to go into its history and development here. For greater background information see Heclo and Wildavsky (1974), Bridges (1964), or Brittan (1969).