Committee of Enquiry on the Control of Public Expenditure (Plowden Committee): Records

T 291

1958-1961

Records of the Committee of Enquiry on the Control of Public Expenditure (Plowden Committee). Contains unregistered files some of which bear manuscript references in two series: CPE (Control of Public Expenditure files concerning the setting up and operation of the committee, minutes of meetings, and notes by the secretary); and TIP (Treasury Internal Papers containing formal minutes of disussion meetings of the Heads of Treasury Divisions, and circulated papers). Also included in the series are some miscellaneous reports and papers.

Other files concerning the setting up of the committee can be found in T 233

Public Record(s)

English

85 files and volumes

Subject to 30 year closure

TheCommittee of Enquiry on the Control of Public Expenditure was set up in 1959 under the chairmanship of Lord Plowden to examine the machinery of government expenditure. The committee's terms of reference were:

"To examine the whole machinery of government expenditure - Parliamentary, Treasury and Departmental, including the machinery by which financial implications are taken into account in Ministerial decisions".

It was a Treasury controlled enquiry, with some advice from outside the government service. The membership consisted of two Treasury members, three members from other government departments, and three members from commerce and industry. The Treasury provided the secretary.

Lord Plowden had been a temporary civil servant during the Second World War, and had held appointments on numerous committees. From 1947 to 1953 he was Treasury Chief Planning Officer and Chairman of the Economic Planning Board.

The other members of the committee were Sir Robert Hall and Sir Thomas Padmore (Treasury), Dame Evelyn Sharpe, Mr Hardman and Mr Wey (other civil service members), Sir Jeremy Raisman (Deputy Chairman of Lloyd's Bank), Sir Sam Brown (Linklater and Parris), and Mr Wall (EMI Ltd.), representing industry and commerce. The committee made a series of confidential reports to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.