Tomorrow is Budget day in Barbados, and a few observations on the process may be of some interest.
Surprising as it may seem, a Budget is NOT a constitutional requirement. The late Right Excellent Errol Barrow drove home this point in 1975 when he did not deliver a budget but engaged in what he called in sunny Barbados “a fireside chat.”
Chris Sinckler will not deliver a fireside chat, but his task is akin to being in the hot seat.
Now, a Minister of Finance holds one of the greatest offices of the State. He is the only minister who is allowed to make law simply by speaking, and that lawmaking right simply by speech is concretised in law.
Here is the abbreviated history of the point. The Bill of Rights, a British Statute of 1689, provided that there should be no taxation except under that authority of a law, but for many years since then, the British Parliament after Budgets, had by resolution (not law) of the House taxed its citizens pending the passing of the Act which authorised the new tax.
Then, in 1912, one Mr Bowles took the Bank of England to court for deducting tax from his dividend cheques BEFORE the act was passed, but after the resolution had gone through the House.
The High Court said that the government was wrong, and the deductions were not sanctioned by law.
As a result, a Provisional Collection of Taxes Act to plug the loophole was passed. Barbados also has an act similarly named, which allows our Minister of Finance to speak and make law pending the passing of the formal act of Parliament, and so Mr Sinckler can, if he wishes, impose a law “as from midnight tonight”.
Control of the purse
Now, to my next point of a Prime minister not holding the Ministry of Finance. This “arrangement” has caused political problems here and abroad, though for several reasons it can never cause strictly constitutional problems for any prime minister who knows his or her onions.
A prime minister is boss, or ought to be, but the Budget more directly affects the pockets and welfare of the people than most other policy initiatives, and sometimes, the prime minister and the finance minister cannot see eye to eye on policy.
It happened to Margaret Thatcher.
As prime minister, she insisted on the poll tax being passed. Her finance minister, Nigel Lawson, disagreed. She won the battle. The poll tax was passed, and the rest is history. He resigned after a while, and after yet another while, so did she!
Tony Blair also had disagreements with his finance minister, Gordon Brown. Public and published sources describe Brown as playing his cards “so close that they are stitched to his chest”. More disturbingly, Blair was known to complain in the presence of civil servants that the newspapers seemed to know more of what would be in the Budget than he did.
I mention these examples of the stresses and strains which may develop particularly where the Ministry of Finance is not held by the Prime Minister, but fortunately, Prime Minister Freundel Stuart and Mr Sinckler appear to be singing the same song from the same hymn sheet.
I, however, recall the resignation in the late 1980s of Minister of Finance Dr Richie Haynes.
The doctor’s published reasons revolved around the appointment of the Governor of the Central Bank, but a statement by then Prime Minister Erskine (now Sir Lloyd) Sandiford when he took over the Ministry of Finance that the “economy was headed for the rocks” and his changes of budgetary policy suggested to my suspicious mind that budgetary matters may also have been seriously in issue.
In any event, in my view, all prime ministers have a prior duty in respect of the treasury and financial which is superior to any role that any finance minister, however appointed, can possibly have.
I base this comment on the transplant of the spirit of the conventional usages and practice at Westminster surrounding the office of the Prime Minister. His historical and primary title is First Lord of the Treasury. Indeed, the title prime minister is of later vintage and was once used as term of abuse. The Chancellor of the Exchequer (British Finance minister) is the Second Lord of the Treasury.
It is only in his right as First Lord of the Treasury that the Prime Minister lives at No 10 Downing Street, and as Second Lord, the Chancellor lives at No.11. One could have justified Mr Sandiford’s “overreaching” appointment of Dr Kurleigh King as Central Bank Governor, on the basis that he was First Lord of the Treasury and understood the office.
Confidential process
It follows too, from its very nature that creating and writing a Budget speech is emphatically not a public exercise. Hence, the swift political sanction when there is a leak of part of its contents before Budget day.
In 1947, the Labour Chancellor Hugh Dalton was walking into the House of Commons to deliver the Budget speech when he made an off the cuff remark to a journalist about some trivial budgetary proposal.
The journalist published the detail before Dalton had reached that point in his speech and while the stock exchange was still open. Dalton had to resign. Budget leaks are not supposed to happen.
So that whatever Mr Sinckler does tomorrow, he will be carrying and discharging heavy national responsibilities, but he will be supported by the legacy of a great and ancient office of the State.
