Introduction

Public policy is an all-embracing term. In this chapter, three strands are distinguished for discussion. The first relates to social policies, such as the wearing (or non-wearing) of seat belts; the second to commercial-type decisions that come within the public domain (for example, the development of Concorde, the possibility of a Channel Tunnel, or the planned size of British Steel); the third to decisions in the political area concerning matters such as the scale of disaster preparations, or the balance of public expenditure between education and health services. These sub-divisions are not watertight, but provide a framework for discussion.

Two general points tend to colour most decisions in the public policy domain. The first is the view of politicians that their primary task is to be re-elected. This leads to an overriding emphasis on the short-term effects of decisions, with correspondingly lower emphasis on longer-term consequences. This would not matter if the areas in which public policy operated were confined to those of little consequence and easy reversibility but with the increasing involvement of governments – particularly in the UK–with commercial-type operations and large-scale capital development programmes, this shortened time horizon has some very unfortunate side effects. Moreover, such a policy framework conditions those concerned with decisions outside the public domain to think not so much in terms of ‘what can be done best within this Government policy’ but ‘what can be done that will as far as possible be robust under a change of Government policy’.

The second point relates to Government accounting conventions.