In practical terms, that has proven to be the best way of doing it. Once you get into multi-year budgets, you need to build in more and more contingency for future unknowns, until the budget becomes a collection of ifs, whats and maybes, that ends up being revisited and adjusted every year anyway. The reality is that everything beyond a year is a forecast (another word for a guess). Even annual budgets sometimes have to be re-visited within the year, when exceptional events occur (2008-2009 springs to mind).
Long-term spending plans are set through plans or policies, such as the NSS, which is a 30-year plan - it allocates no specific figures for spending beyond the short-term (T31) because we don't know what the future will bring in economic terms, we can only look at what we consider to be most likely. A policy sets out what the Government wants to achieve in terms of objectives. The budget allocated to achieving those objectives will be calculated in more detail closer to the time when the consequences of economic growth, inflation and a hundred an one other factors are known.
@ Jake - your post has crossed with mine.
That doesn't mean there isn't one, though (and large parts of it are written down - just not in one document)Jake1992 wrote:For one there is no written British constitution
No - its a decision of Cabinet. Of course the PM and Chancellor have a great deal of influence in Cabinet, but it is a collective decision of them all. Neither the PM or Chancellor get everything their own way.Jake1992 wrote:ultermitly the final say lays with the PM and the chancellor. It is they who on the end decides who gets what
On the day, yes. But by then a great deal of work will have gone into reviewing the policy that the budget is there to enable. That is the function of Parliamentary committees. Most of that work is not public (as in the Chamber or even in formal committee). Back-bench MPs get a lot of say behind the scenes (the Whips function works goes both ways)Jake1992 wrote:Parliamentary approval is all but a given due to the fact the the sitting government of the day will hold a majority in one way or another and will whip the budget through
Or the MOD allocates the money in that way out of it's annual budget of £38b. Once again, the Treasury doesn't care about the individual project. It cares about the fact that it has to provide $3.16b per month to the MOD. Have you ever considered that the Treasury has started interfering because the MOD is mismanaging it's budget? It has a long history of failed projects and wasted finances.Jake1992 wrote:Eg if the MOD for example could of been allowed to spend like this say
Year 1 - £3bn
Year 2 - £3bn
Year 3 - £2bn
Year 4 - £1bn
Year 5 -£1bn
Instead of
Year 1 - £2bn
Year 2 - £2bn
Year 3 - £2bn
And so on