Public Sector Control at the Top

Most of this book has been about concepts and systems and the harsh realities of every Government’s public expenditure decisions. But the subject is really about people, and how they spend their time, and what they actually do. This is nowhere more important than in the Treasury; for the job is to supervise and authorise, by direct or indirect means, the expenditure of some, £30,000 million a year. This function is carried out by a very small number of high-quality people — rightly very small, and rightly of high-quality, for the only way to begin to deal with a task of this kind is to find the crucial points on which to press,1 and to enlist the help and support of hundreds of other people, in departments, local authorities, nationalised industries, etc. The whole purpose of PESC is to do precisely this; and for my part I would sooner tackle it with a hand-picked staff of too than with a great bureaucratic empire of 10,000.