Professor David Heald
Current Research Activities |
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- Project on the public expenditure record of the 1997 Labour Government,
originally funded by the Nuffield Foundation, but continuing using University
resources. This project analyses three
features of the public expenditure record of the 1997 Labour Government.
First, there have been significant changes in decision-making processes (eg
3-year ‘fixed’ plans; new macro-fiscal aggregates and policy rules; resource
accounting; and greater year-on-year expenditure flexibility). Second, public
expenditure has been central to the Government’s political strategy: lean years
were followed by years of plenty. Appeals to fiscal transparency have
conflicted with the desire to shift attitudes to tax and spending, prompting
recourse to devices such as off-budget revenue and capital finance. Third, in
high profile spending areas (education, health and transport), time lags and
labour shortages have complicated the translation of input plenty into service
outputs. The output will be the enhancement of
understanding, both of the expenditure developments and of the obstacles to
successful policy implementation. Publications so far from this project include: ‘Fiscal
transparency: concepts, measurement and UK practice’; and a comprehensive guide to UK and Scottish public expenditure planning and
control.
- My interests have broadened from the specific topic of ‘fiscal
transparency’ to the more general relevance of ‘transparency’ to public policy.
On this topic, I have published an edited book (Transparency: The Key to Better
Governance?) with Christopher Hood (Gladstone Professor of
Government, All Souls College, Oxford). I now intend to write about
transparency in the context of public sector ‘modernisation’ and ‘reform’.
- I have a long track record of research on the Private Finance Initiative (Public-Private Partnerships): for example, about its origins and rationale and about accounting treatment and VFM. I am currently working with George Georgiou (University of Birmingham) on an article on technical aspects of PPP accounting and another on the regulation of PPP accounting.
- My interests on devolution finance go back to the publication of the Kilbrandon Commission in 1974, after which I made financing proposals (including the future tartan tax) in Making Devolution Work (1976). With Alasdair McLeod (University of Aberdeen), I am closely monitoring developments ten years after the UK devolution settlement and will contribute to public debates on possible changes to the funding system. Our collaborative work is available here, under the heading 'On devolution and territorial public expenditure'.
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