Every year, the event is on the British government’s agenda, not without a certain amount of apprehension. In the United Kingdom, a few days before the presentation of the following year’s finance bill, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), the leading research center on budgetary and tax issues, publishes its “green budget” since 1988. This 400-page document, thoroughly examined by the country’s politicians and economists, presents “an in-depth analysis of the economic challenges and trade-offs facing the Chancellor.”
Its authors present ways to improve public finances and outline the red lines that should not be crossed. This year, the new version will be published on October 10, a little over two weeks before the new Minister of the Economy, Rachel Reeves, presents the first budget of Keir Starmer’s government. A first version eagerly awaited, while Labour campaigned on the theme of budgetary rigor.
The exercise conducted by the IFS, which has become traditional in the UK, would currently be difficult to replicate in France, as the evaluation of public policies and the effectiveness of state spending remains a blind spot. “For a long time, we had an embryonic evaluation culture, but we cannot say today that we do not have one. Unfortunately, we do not take hold of it enough”, regrets a former senior manager of the Court of Auditors.
For his first interview since his appointment, Michel Barnier nevertheless attempted, on Sunday, September 22, an incursion into this minefield. “We can, in all public services, do well, sometimes better, with perhaps less public money,” declared the new Prime Minister, on the 8 p.m. news on France 2, without specifying how he intended to go about it. An old political sea serpent. “The absence of an evaluation culture is a very Franco-French problem,” confirms economist Christian de Boissieu.
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In the United Kingdom, it developed from the 1960s. “The question of the effectiveness of public spending is a basic element of the measures taken by governments. For the taxpayer, a pound must be spent as well as possible,” emphasizes Catherine Mathieu, economist at the OFCE. To improve decision-making, the British Treasury has written several guides for public administrations in order to prepare future policies, but also to evaluate them. “This is the real difference between British pragmatism and France, where there is always room for debate without giving ourselves a common starting point,” believes Stéphane Gregoir, professor at the Toulouse School of Economics.
To assess the impact of its public policies, the British government also relies heavily on independent centres such as the IFS or research laboratories at major universities in the country such as the London School of Economics and Political Science. “This is very important for the quality of public discourse. We certainly play a major role in holding governments to account,” explains Paul Johnson, director of the IFS, who has carried out a lot of work in recent months to analyse the proposals of the different parties during the legislative elections. “These major centres have dedicated staff who contribute to training for this type of exercise,” explains Stéphane Gregoir. “Some of their doctoral students regularly go into central administration and disseminate their knowledge.”
Their work is closely scrutinized to the point of greatly influencing future government decisions. “In France, we have a different tradition: public policy will first be studied and evaluated at the ministry level. It’s a more opaque process,” emphasizes Catherine Mathieu. The Institute of Public Policy has been trying for several years to imitate the IFS in France and to weigh in on the public debate. “The big difference is that we haven’t established a complete institutionalization of the evaluation procedure,” says Stéphane Gregoir. “We give missions without really providing the human resources or in terms of skills.”
Added to this is the difficulty in defining the objectives sought. “Managing the performance of public policies is not primarily a problem of measurement or indicators, but above all of defining the results sought. These are extremely complex subjects. It is not so easy to agree on what success is,” says a former senior official at Bercy. Although Michel Barnier mentioned the subject in his first television interview, the urgent timetable concerning the budget should, once again, relegate this issue to the background.
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