ABSTRACT
In Britain, as in America, the introduction of a government-wide system of public expenditure control has had profound consequences for the planning of individual social services. The origins of the new system of public expenditure control lie in the frustrations experienced by the Treasury and its Ministers in the late 1950s. However, in 1963, in response to a pre-election challenge by the Labour Opposition, the Government published a summary of the results of the PESC survey that was mentioned earlier. Sympathetic observers too are convinced that the British Treasury has produced perhaps the most successful expenditure management systems in the world. Housing has proved particularly difficult for central government to forecast, and so has social security. The manpower intensive services like education and health have been nearer the mark. The mechanism of the advisory committee has been important in the formation of British education policy for more than a century.
