ESTIMATES. In British national finance, the expenditure of public money is safeguarded by the yearly preparation, by each spending department of State, of an official estimate of the amount required to carry on the business of the department in the forthcoming financial year. The British financial year begins in April and ends in March, so that the estimates for the financial year 1939-4o have to be prepared early in 1939.
The estimate of each department is called for by the Treasury, which on Oct. i of each year sends a request for the statement to each department concerned. As the period to which the esti mate relates begins in the following April, the Treasury request is thus made six months in advance. These estimates are carefully checked by the Treasury, whose officials scrutinize them and compare carefully item by item with the expenditures of former years. The estimates receive more than civil service criticism. The chancellor of the exchequer for the time being is by virtue of his office anxious to keep down expenditure, for additions to expenditure make difficulties for him and compel him, unless revenue on the basis of existing taxation is swelling or likely to swell, to proceed to the unpopular task of imposing new taxation.
If any spending department of State furnishes to the Treasury estimates in which fresh items appear, or in which old items show considerable increases, the Treasury in such case returns the esti mate to the issuing department with a request for explanation, or even with a demand for reduction. Thus in the first place the estimates of the British spending departments have to seek and gain acceptance by the Treasury. That is a cardinal principle of British national finance, and it casts a peculiarly onerous responsi bility upon the Treasury, and upon its political chief, the chan cellor of the exchequer, who is recognized as the first lieutenant of the British prime minister. When the chancellor of the exchequer rises in the House of Commons to announce the details of his budget, he has in effect made himself responsible for the presenta tion to parliament of reasonable estimates.
It is not always easy for a spending department to estimate in advance the sums it will require to carry on its business during a period which begins six months after the Treasury demands its figures, and ends 18 months after that demand is made and in cases requiring additional expenditure a supplementary estimate has to be submitted for the approval of the Treasury in the same manner as the estimates of the year. Even the mere anticipation of war, as in the air raid precautions expenditure, 1938-39, may cause big supplementary estimates to be presented.
The British spending departments are: (I) the army, (2) the navy, (3) the air force, and (4) the big group known as the civil service. The estimates of the army, navy and air force concern matters of high policy, and the Treasury officials can do little with them. The civil service estimates concern many categories, including public works, civil departments, salaries and expenses, administration of law, education, foreign and colonial services, national insurance, labour exchanges, etc. In addition, there are the departments producing revenue, viz., customs and excise, inland revenue, and the post office.
The post office brings into the British revenue much more than it costs to run. Nevertheless, the estimates presented by the post office include the gross outgoings, although the whole of these outgoings are actually much less than is received by the post office in the course of the year. This manner of presenting the accounts always makes the national expenditure look larger than it really is.
The estimates, as sanctioned by the Treasury, are printed and placed before the House of Commons in the form of small book lets, in which the figures asked for are compared with those of the previous year and details given of any sums, such as fees, etc., received by the department in the course of its work and not paid into the revenue (see APPROPRIATIONS IN AID). The House of Commons possesses the constitutional right to criticize every estimate submitted to it, but in practice this right is largely cur tailed by the exigencies of government. Thoroughly to debate even the main items in the estimates would take up the greater part of the time of the British parliament, which has never yet simplified the subject by referring such estimates to a special committee. It is true that the estimates are technically considered in committee, but that committee, the "committee of supply" is nothing more or less than the entire House of Commons sitting as a committee, with the Speaker out of the chair and the mace under the table.
With the great growth of parliamentary business in the latter part of the 19th century and the beginning of the loth century, the parliamentary time given to the discussion of the estimates was contracted and reduced to 20 allotted days. So that the Gov ernment of the day should not be freed from criticism, however, it is the British constitutional practice to give the Opposition the right to name what estimates they wish discussed on each of the allotted days. The value of this provision lies in the fact that if any particular spending department is thought to be misbehav ing itself in administration, the Opposition has the opportunity to call the conduct of the department in question by calling for the discussion of its particular estimates. The constitutional form used is that the Opposition puts down an amendment to the vote of supply proposing to reduce it by f roo. (See BUDGET; PARLIA