Financial Secretary to the Treasury
Financial Secretary to the Treasury is a junior Ministerial post in the British Treasury. It is the fifth most significant ministerial role within the Treasury after the First Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the Paymaster General, it is never a Cabinet office. The incumbent as of June 2017 is Mel Stride a Comptroller of the Household; the previous office holder was Jane Ellison. The role of Financial Secretary to the Treasury was created in 1711 and was known as the Junior Secretary to the Treasury to help deal with the increasing workload of the Senior Secretary to the Treasury; the first Junior Secretary to the Treasury is recorded as Thomas Harley, appointed on 11 June 1711. The position has continued without any major interruption to the present day; when the position of Senior Secretary to the Treasury became vacant not as the result of an election of change of government the Junior Secretary was automatically promoted to the senior role.
Over time however, the roles of the Senior and Junior Secretaries began to diverge with the Senior Secretary post being used as a sinecure post for the Chief Whip, with no formal responsibilities to the Treasury. The Junior Secretary however remained a substantive position working in the Treasury; as such the Senior Secretary became known as the'Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury' while the Junior Secretary became known as the'Financial Secretary to the Treasury' and the'automatic' promotion from Junior to Senior ceased. While the exact date this change occurred is disputed it is agreed that by 1830 the distinction was complete. In 1923 Sir William Joynson-Hicks became the–to date–only Financial Secretary to serve in the Cabinet due to the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin concurrently serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer. In May 2010 as part of the ministerial reorganisation by the First Cameron ministry, the Financial Secretary was given the additional semi-official title of City Minister.
This position was retained until April 2014 when following the promotion of Sajid Javid to Secretary of State for Culture and Sport the portfolio of City Minister was moved from the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. Appointment to the position of Financial Secretary to the Treasury is considered an important stepping stone in a politician's career. Notable former Financial Secretaries to the Treasury include Lord Frederick Cavendish, Austen Chamberlain, Stanley Baldwin, Enoch Powell, Nigel Lawson, Norman Lamont; the current responsibilities of the Financial Secretary to the Treasury include Departmental responsibility for the Office for National Statistics, the Royal Mint. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury had Departmental responsibility for HM Customs & Excise until the merger with the Inland Revenue to form HM Revenue and Customs. See Secretary to the Treasury for earlier incumbents Colour key: Conservative Liberal Peelite Tories Whig Colour key: Conservative Labour Liberal Liberal National Liberal Unionist National Labour None Unionist Note 1.
^ Between June 1917 and May 1919 Lever and Baldwin jointly held the position of Financial Secretary. Note 2. ^ As Baldwin was both Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer Joynson-Hicks was a member of the Cabinet. Colour key: Conservative Labour Secretary to the Treasury British History Online List of Secretaries to the Treasury Treasury Ministerial responsibilities
Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury is a junior ministerial post in the British Treasury, ranked below the First Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the Paymaster General and the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, alongside the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. It is not a Cabinet office. Unlike the other posts of Secretary to the Treasury, it is only used normally when the post of Paymaster General is allocated to a Minister outside the Treasury; the office was reinstated in June 2007, when Angela Eagle was appointed Exchequer Secretary after Tessa Jowell had been appointed Paymaster General and Olympic Minister within the Cabinet Office. The previous Exchequer Secretary was Phillip Oppenheim, who held the post from 23 July 1996 to 2 May 1997, when he lost his seat in the general election that brought Tony Blair to power. Angela Eagle was replaced by Kitty Ussher in the June 2009 reshuffle, with Jowell continuing in the Paymaster General role.
Ussher resigned on 17 June 2009 and was replaced by Sarah McCarthy-Fry. Following the 2010 general election, the post was taken by Conservative MP David Gauke. In May 2015, Conservative MP Damian Hinds assumed the office. From 15 June 2017 to January 2018, Andrew Jones served as the Exchequer Secretary to HM Treasury. On 9 January 2018, Robert Jenrick was appointed to the post. HM Treasury Enterprise and productivity including small business taxation and support to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on economic reform Competition and better regulation Science and skills policy, including implementation of the 10-year science and innovation strategy and the R&D tax credit Regional economic policy Urban regeneration and social exclusion including housing and planning gain supplement. Secretary to the Treasury
William Pitt the Younger
William Pitt the Younger was a prominent British Tory statesman of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. He became the youngest UK Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24, he left office in 1801, but served as Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer for most of his time as Prime Minister, he is known as "the Younger" to distinguish him from his father, William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, called William Pitt the Elder or "Chatham", who had served as Prime Minister. The younger Pitt's prime ministerial tenure, which came during the reign of George III, was dominated by major events in Europe, including the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Pitt, although referred to as a Tory, or "new Tory", called himself an "independent Whig" and was opposed to the development of a strict partisan political system, he led Britain in the great wars against Napoleon. Pitt was an outstanding administrator who worked for efficiency and reform, bringing in a new generation of outstanding administrators.
He cracked down on radicalism. To engage the threat of Irish support for France, he engineered the Acts of Union 1800 and tried to get Catholic emancipation as part of the Union, he created the "new Toryism", which revived the Tory Party and enabled it to stay in power for the next quarter-century. The historian Asa Briggs argues that his personality did not endear itself to the British mind, for Pitt was too solitary and too colourless, too exuded superiority, his greatness came in the war with France. Pitt reacted to become what Lord Minto called "the Atlas of our reeling globe", his integrity and industry and his role as defender of the threatened nation allowed him to inspire and access all the national reserves of strength. William Wilberforce said that, "For personal purity, disinterestedness and love of this country, I have never known his equal." Historian Charles Petrie concludes that he was one of the greatest prime ministers "if on no other ground than that he enabled the country to pass from the old order to the new without any violent upheaval...
He understood the new Britain." For this he is ranked amongst British Prime Ministers. William Pitt, second son of William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, was born at Hayes Place in the village of Hayes, Kent. Pitt was from a political family on both sides, his mother, Hester Grenville, was sister to former prime minister George Grenville. According to biographer John Ehrman, Pitt inherited brilliance and dynamism from his father's line, a determined, methodical nature from the Grenvilles. Suffering from occasional poor health as a boy, he was educated at home by the Reverend Edward Wilson. An intelligent child, Pitt became proficient in Latin and Greek. In 1773, aged fourteen, he attended Pembroke College, where he studied political philosophy, mathematics, trigonometry and history. At Cambridge, Pitt was tutored by George Pretyman. Pitt appointed Pretyman Bishop of Lincoln Winchester and drew upon his advice throughout his political career. While at Cambridge, he befriended the young William Wilberforce, who became a lifelong friend and political ally in Parliament.
Pitt tended to socialise only with fellow students and others known to him venturing outside the university grounds. Yet he was described as friendly. According to Wilberforce, Pitt had an exceptional wit along with an endearingly gentle sense of humour: "no man... indulged more or in that playful facetiousness which gratifies all without wounding any." In 1776, plagued by poor health, took advantage of a little-used privilege available only to the sons of noblemen, chose to graduate without having to pass examinations. Pitt's father, who had by been raised to the peerage as Earl of Chatham, died in 1778; as a younger son, Pitt the Younger received a small inheritance. He received legal education at Lincoln's Inn and was called to the bar in the summer of 1780. During the general elections of September 1780, Pitt, at the age of 21, contested the University of Cambridge seat, but lost. Still intent on entering Parliament, with the help of his university comrade, Charles Manners, 4th Duke of Rutland, secured the patronage of James Lowther.
Lowther controlled the pocket borough of Appleby. Pitt's entry into parliament is somewhat ironic as he railed against the same pocket and rotten boroughs that had given him his seat. In Parliament, the youthful Pitt cast aside his tendency to be withdrawn in public, emerging as a noted debater right from his maiden speech. Pitt aligned himself with prominent Whigs such as Charles James Fox. With the Whigs, Pitt denounced the continuation of the American War of Independence, as his father had. Instead he proposed that the prime minister, Lord North, make peace with the rebellious American colonies. Pitt supported parliamentary reform measures, including a proposal that would have checked electoral corruption, he renewed his friendship with William Wilberforce, now MP for Hull, with whom he met in the gallery of the House of Commons. After Lord North's ministry collapsed in 1782, the Whig Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham was appointed prime minister. Pitt was offered the minor post of vice-treasurer of Ireland, but he refused, considering the post overly subordinate.
Lord Rockingham died only three months after coming to power. Many
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland known internationally as the UK Parliament, British Parliament, or Westminster Parliament, domestically as Parliament, is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It alone possesses legislative supremacy and thereby ultimate power over all other political bodies in the UK and the overseas territories. Parliament is bicameral but has three parts, consisting of the Sovereign, the House of Lords, the House of Commons; the two houses meet in the Palace of Westminster in the City of Westminster, one of the inner boroughs of the capital city, London. The House of Lords includes two different types of members: the Lords Spiritual, consisting of the most senior bishops of the Church of England, the Lords Temporal, consisting of life peers, appointed by the Sovereign on the advice of the Prime Minister, of 92 hereditary peers, sitting either by virtue of holding a royal office, or by being elected by their fellow hereditary peers.
Prior to the opening of the Supreme Court in October 2009, the House of Lords performed a judicial role through the Law Lords. The House of Commons is an elected chamber with elections to 650 single member constituencies held at least every five years under the first-past-the-post system; the two Houses meet in separate chambers in the Palace of Westminster in London. By constitutional convention, all government ministers, including the Prime Minister, are members of the House of Commons or, less the House of Lords and are thereby accountable to the respective branches of the legislature. Most cabinet ministers are from the Commons, whilst junior ministers can be from either House. However, the Leader of the House of Lords must be a peer; the Parliament of Great Britain was formed in 1707 following the ratification of the Treaty of Union by Acts of Union passed by the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland, both Acts of Union stating, "That the United Kingdom of Great Britain be represented by one and the same Parliament to be styled The Parliament of Great Britain".
At the start of the 19th century, Parliament was further enlarged by Acts of Union ratified by the Parliament of Great Britain and the Parliament of Ireland that abolished the latter and added 100 Irish MPs and 32 Lords to the former to create the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 formally amended the name to the "Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", five years after the secession of the Irish Free State in 1922. With the global expansion of the British Empire, the UK Parliament has shaped the political systems of many countries as ex-colonies and so it has been called the "Mother of Parliaments". However, John Bright – who coined the epithet – used it in reference to the political culture of "England" rather than just the parliamentary system. In theory, the UK's supreme legislative power is vested in the Crown-in-Parliament. However, the Crown acts on the advice of the Prime Minister and the powers of the House of Lords are limited to only delaying legislation.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was created on 1 January 1801, by the merger of the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland under the Acts of Union 1800. The principle of ministerial responsibility to the lower House did not develop until the 19th century—the House of Lords was superior to the House of Commons both in theory and in practice. Members of the House of Commons were elected in an antiquated electoral system, under which constituencies of vastly different sizes existed. Thus, the borough of Old Sarum, with seven voters, could elect two members, as could the borough of Dunwich, which had completely disappeared into the sea due to land erosion. Many small constituencies, known as pocket or rotten boroughs, were controlled by members of the House of Lords, who could ensure the election of their relatives or supporters. During the reforms of the 19th century, beginning with the Reform Act 1832, the electoral system for the House of Commons was progressively regularised.
No longer dependent on the Lords for their seats, MPs grew more assertive. The supremacy of the British House of Commons was reaffirmed in the early 20th century. In 1909, the Commons passed the so-called "People's Budget", which made numerous changes to the taxation system which were detrimental to wealthy landowners; the House of Lords, which consisted of powerful landowners, rejected the Budget. On the basis of the Budget's popularity and the Lords' consequent unpopularity, the Liberal Party narrowly won two general elections in 1910. Using the result as a mandate, the Liberal Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, introduced the Parliament Bill, which sought to restrict the powers of the House of Lords; when the Lords refused to pass the bill, Asquith countered with a promise extracted from the King in secret before the second general election of 1910 and requested the creation of several hundred Liberal peers, so as to erase the Conservative majority in the House of Lords. In the face of such a threat, the House of Lords narrowly passed the bill.
The Parliament Act 1911, as it became, prevented the Lords from blocking a money bill, allowed them to delay any other bill for a maximum of three sessions, after which it could become law over their objections. However, regardless of the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949, t
Chancellor of the Exchequer
The Chancellor and Under-Treasurer of Her Majesty's Exchequer known as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or the Chancellor, is a senior official within the Government of the United Kingdom and head of Her Majesty's Treasury. The office is a British Cabinet-level position; the chancellor is responsible for all economic and financial matters, equivalent to the role of finance minister in other nations. The position is considered one of the four Great Offices of State, in recent times has come to be the most powerful office in British politics after the prime minister; the Chancellor of the Exchequer is now always Second Lord of the Treasury as one of the Lords Commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Treasurer. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was common for the prime minister to serve as Chancellor of the Exchequer if he sat in the Commons. In cases when the chancellorship was vacant, the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench would act as Chancellor pro tempore; the last Lord Chief Justice to serve in this way was Lord Denman in 1834.
The chancellor is the third-oldest major state office in British history. The earliest surviving records which are the results of the exchequer's audit, date from 1129–30 under King Henry I and show continuity from previous years; the chancellor controlled monetary policy as well as fiscal policy until 1997, when the Bank of England was granted independent control of its interest rates. The chancellor has oversight of public spending across Government departments; the holder of the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer is ex officio Second Lord of the Treasury as a member of the commission exercising the ancient office of Lord High Treasurer. As the Second Lord, his official residence is 11 Downing Street in London, next door to the residence of the First Lord of the Treasury, who resides in 10 Downing Street. While in the past both houses were private residences, today they serve as interlinked offices, with the occupant living in an apartment made from attic rooms resided in by servants. Since 1827, the chancellor has always held the office of Second Lord of the Treasury when that person has not been the prime minister.
A previous chancellor, Robert Lowe, described the office in the following terms in the House of Commons, on 11 April 1870: "The Chancellor of the Exchequer is a man whose duties make him more or less of a taxing machine. He is entrusted with a certain amount of misery which it is his duty to distribute as as he can." The chancellor has considerable control over other departments as it is the Treasury which sets Departmental Expenditure Limits. The amount of power this gives to an individual chancellor depends on his personal forcefulness, his status within his party and his relationship with the prime minister. Gordon Brown, who became chancellor when Labour came into Government in 1997, had a large personal power base in the party; as a result, Tony Blair chose to keep him in the same position throughout his ten years as prime minister. This has strengthened a pre-existing trend towards the Chancellor occupying a clear second position among government ministers, elevated above his traditional peers, the Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary.
One part of the Chancellor's key roles involves the framing of the annual year budget. As of 2017, the first is the Autumn Budget known as Budget Day which forecasts government spending in the next financial year and announces new financial measures; the second is a Spring Statement known as a "mini-Budget". Britain's tax year has retained the old Julian end of year: 24 March / 5 April. From 1993, the Budget was in spring, preceded by an annual autumn statement; this was called Pre-Budget Report. The Autumn Statement took place in November or December; the 1997, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2012 and 2016 budgets were all delivered on a Wednesday, summarised in a speech to the House of Commons. The budget is a state secret. Hugh Dalton, on his way to giving the budget speech in 1947, inadvertently blurted out key details to a newspaper reporter, they appeared in print before he made his speech. Dalton was forced to resign. Although the Bank of England is responsible for setting interest rates, the chancellor plays an important part in the monetary policy structure.
He sets the inflation target. Under the Bank of England Act 1998 the chancellor has the power of appointment of four out of nine members of the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee – the so-called'external' members, he has a high level of influence over the appointment of the Bank's Governor and Deputy Governors, has the right of consultation over the appointment of the two remaining MPC members from within the Bank. The Act provides that the Government has the power to give instructions to the Bank on interest rates for a limited period in extreme circumstances; this power has never been used. At HM Treasury the chancellor is supported by a political team of four junior ministers and by permanent civil servants; the most important junior minister is the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, a member of the Cabinet
Acts of Union 1707
The Acts of Union were two Acts of Parliament: the Union with Scotland Act 1706 passed by the Parliament of England, the Union with England Act passed in 1707 by the Parliament of Scotland. They put into effect the terms of the Treaty of Union, agreed on 22 July 1706, following negotiation between commissioners representing the parliaments of the two countries. By the two Acts, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland—which at the time were separate states with separate legislatures, but with the same monarch—were, in the words of the Treaty, "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain"; the two countries had shared a monarch since the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when King James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne from his double first cousin twice removed, Queen Elizabeth I. Although described as a Union of Crowns, until 1707 there were in fact two separate Crowns resting on the same head. Prior to the Acts of Union there had been three previous attempts to unite the two countries by Acts of Parliament, but it was not until the early 18th century that both political establishments came to support the idea, albeit for different reasons.
The Acts took effect on 1 May 1707. On this date, the Scottish Parliament and the English Parliament united to form the Parliament of Great Britain, based in the Palace of Westminster in London, the home of the English Parliament. Hence, the Acts are referred to as the Union of the Parliaments. On the Union, the historian Simon Schama said "What began as a hostile merger, would end in a full partnership in the most powerful going concern in the world... it was one of the most astonishing transformations in European history." Despite attempts by Edward I to conquer Scotland in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, the two countries were separate. However, when Elizabeth I became Queen of England in 1558, a union became likely as she neither married nor had children. From 1558 onwards, her heir was her Catholic cousin Mary, Queen of Scots who pledged herself to a peaceful union between the two kingdoms. In 1567, Mary was forced to abdicate as Queen of Scots and replaced by her infant son James VI, brought up as a Protestant and became heir to the English throne.
After Elizabeth died in 1603, the two Crowns were held in personal union by James, now James I of England, his Stuart successors, but England and Scotland remained separate kingdoms. When James became King of England in 1603, the creation of a unified Church of Scotland and England governed by bishops was the first step in his vision of a centralised, Unionist state. On his accession, he announced his intention to unite the two realms so he would not be "guilty of bigamy; the 1603 Union of England and Scotland Act established a joint Commission to agree terms but the English Parliament was concerned this would lead to the imposition of an absolutist structure similar to that of Scotland. James dropped his policy of a speedy union, the topic disappeared from the legislative agenda while attempts to revive it in 1610 were met with hostility; this did not mean James abandoned the idea. The problem was that the two churches were different in both structure and doctrine; the religious policies followed by James and his son Charles I were intended as precursors to political union.
The 1639–1640 Bishops' Wars confirmed the primacy of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland or kirk and established a Covenanter government in Scotland. The Scots remained neutral when the First English Civil War began in 1642, but grew concerned as to the impact of Royalist victory on Scotland after Parliamentary defeats in the first year of the war. Religious union with England was seen as the best way to preserve a Presbyterian kirk; the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant provided Scottish military support for the English Parliament in return for a religious union between the Church of England and the kirk. While it referred to'union' between England and Ireland, it did not explicitly commit to political union which had little support among their English supporters. Religious union was fiercely opposed by the Episcopalian majority in the Church of England and Independents like Oliver Cromwell; the Scots and English Presbyterians came to see the Independents who dominated the New Model Army as a bigger threat than the Royalists and when Charles I surrendered in 1646, they agreed to restore him to the English throne.
Both Royalists and Covenanters agreed the institution of monarchy was divinely ordered but disagreed on the nature and extent of Royal authority versus that of the church. After defeat in the 1647–1648 Second English Civil War, Scotland was occupied by English troops which were withdrawn once the so-called Engagers whom Cromwell held responsible for the war had been replaced by the Kirk Party. In December 1648, Pride's Purge confirmed Cromwell's political control in England by removing Presbyterian MPs from Parliament and executing Charles in January 1649. Despite this, in February, the Kirk Party proclaimed Charles II King of Great Britain.
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