Public–private partnership
A public–private partnership is a cooperative arrangement between two or more public and private sectors of a long-term nature. Governments have used such a mix of private endeavors throughout history. However, the late 20th century and early 21st century have seen a clear trend towards governments across the globe making greater use of various PPP arrangements. PPPs are best seen as a special kind of contract involved in infrastructure provision, such as the building and equipping of schools, transport systems and sewerage systems. There is no consensus about how to define a PPP. PPPs can be understood of both as a language game; when understood as a language game, or brand, the PPP phrase can cover hundreds of different types of long term contracts with a wide range of risk allocations, funding arrangements and transparency requirements. And as a brand, the PPP concept is closely related to concepts such as privatization and the contracting out of government services; when understood as a governance mechanism the PPP concept encompasses at least five families of potential arrangements, one of, the long term infrastructure contract in the model of the UK's Private Finance Initiative.
Particular types of arrangements have been favored in different countries at different times. Infrastructure PPPs as a phenomenon can be understood at five different levels: as a particular project or activity, as a form of project delivery, as a statement of government policy, as a tool of government, or as a wider cultural phenomenon. Different disciplines emphasize different aspects of the PPP phenomena; the engineering and economics professions take a utilitarian, functional focus emphasising concerns such as project delivery and relative value-for-money compared to the traditional ways of delivering large infrastructure projects. In contrast, public administrators and political scientists tend to view PPPs more as a policy brand, as a useful tool for governments to achieve their objectives. Common themes of PPPs are the sharing of risk and the development of innovative, a way of financing over a long-term for the public and private sectors; the use of private finance is another key dimension of many PPPs those influenced by the UK PFI model, although this aspect has waned since the global financial crisis of 2008.
The PPP phenomenon has been controversial. The lack of a shared understanding of what a PPP is makes the process of evaluating whether PPPs have been successful complex. Evidence of PPP performance in terms of VfM and efficiency, for example, is mixed and unavailable. According to Weimer and Vining, "A P3 involves a private entity financing, constructing, or managing a project in return for a promised stream of payments directly from government or indirectly from users over the projected life of the project or some other specified period of time"; because P3s are directly responsible for a variety of activities, as indicated by Weimer and Vining, P3s can evolve into monopolies motivated by rent-seeking behavior. PPPs involve a contract between a public sector authority and a private party, in which the private party provides a public service or project and assumes substantial financial and operational risk in the project. In some types of PPP, the cost of using the service is borne by the users of the service and not by the taxpayer.
In other types, capital investment is made by the private sector on the basis of a contract with government to provide agreed services and the cost of providing the service is borne wholly or in part by the government. Government contributions to a PPP may be in kind. In projects that are aimed at creating public goods like in the infrastructure sector, the government may provide a capital subsidy in the form of a one-time grant, so as to make the project economically viable. In some other cases, the government may support the project by providing revenue subsidies, including tax breaks or by guaranteed annual revenues for a fixed time period. In all cases, the partnerships include a transfer of significant risks to the private sector in an integrated and holistic way, minimizing interfaces for the public entity. An optimal risk allocation is the main value generator for this model of delivering public service. There are many drivers for PPPs. One common driver involves the claim that PPPs enable the public sector to harness the expertise and efficiencies that the private sector can bring to the delivery of certain facilities and services traditionally procured and delivered by the public sector.
Another common driver is that PPPs may be structured so that the public sector body seeking to make a capital investment does not incur any borrowing. Rather, the PPP borrowing is incurred by the private sector vehicle implementing the project. On PPP projects where the cost of using the service is intended to be borne by the end user, the PPP is, from the public sector's perspective, an "off-balance sheet" method of financing the delivery of new or refurbished public sector assets. On PPP projects where the public sector intends to compensate the private sector through availability payments once the facility is established or renewed, the financing is, from the public sector's perspective, "on-balance sheet". Financing costs will be higher for a PPP than for a traditional public financing, because of the private sector higher cost of capital. However, extra financing costs can be offset by private sector efficiency, savings resulting from a holistic approach to delivering the project or se
Consul (representative)
A consul is an official representative of the government of one state in the territory of another acting to assist and protect the citizens of the consul's own country, to facilitate trade and friendship between the people of the two countries. A consul is distinguished from an ambassador, the latter being a representative from one head of state to another. There can be only one ambassador from one country to another, representing the first country's head of state to that of the second, his or her duties revolve around diplomatic relations between the two countries. A less common usage is an administrative consul, who takes a governing role and is appointed by a country that has colonised or occupied another. In classical Greece, some of the functions of the modern consul were fulfilled by a proxenos. Unlike the modern position, this was a citizen of the host polity; the proxenos was a wealthy merchant who had socio-economic ties with another city and who helped its citizens when they were in trouble in his own city.
The position of proxenos was hereditary in a particular family. Modern honorary consuls fulfill a function, to a degree similar to that of the ancient Greek institution. Consuls were the highest magistrates of the Roman Roman Empire; the term was revived by the Republic of Genoa, unlike Rome, bestowed it on various state officials, not restricted to the highest. Among these were Genoese officials stationed in various Mediterranean ports, whose role included duties similar to those of the modern consul, i. e. helping Genoese merchants and sailors in difficulties with the local authorities. The consolat de mar was an institution established under the reign of Peter IV of Aragon in the fourteenth century, spread to 47 locations throughout the Mediterranean, it was a judicial body, administering maritime and commercial law as Lex Mercatoria. Although the consolat de mar was established by the Corts General of the Crown of Aragon, the consuls were independent from the King; this distinction between consular and diplomatic functions remains to this day.
Modern consuls retain limited judicial powers to settle disputes on ships from their country. The consulado de mercaderes was set up in 1543 in Seville as a merchant guild to control trade with Latin America; as such, it had branches in the principal cities of the Spanish colonies. The connection of "consul" with trade and commercial law is retained in French. In Francophone countries, a juge consulaire is a non-professional judge elected by the chamber of commerce to settle commercial disputes in the first instance; the office of a consul is a consulate and is subordinate to the state's main representation in the capital of that foreign country an embassy or – between Commonwealth countries – high commission. Like the terms embassy or high commission, consulate may refer not only to the office of consul, but to the building occupied by the consul and his or her staff; the consulate may share premises with the embassy itself. A consul of the highest rank is termed a consul-general, is appointed to a consulate-general.
There are one or more deputy consuls-general, vice-consuls, consular agents working under the consul-general. A country may appoint more than one consul-general to another nation. Consuls of various ranks may have specific legal authority for certain activities, such as notarizing documents; as such, diplomatic personnel with other responsibilities may receive consular letters patent. Aside from those outlined in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, there are few formal requirements outlining what a consular official must do. For example, for some countries, consular officials may be responsible for the issue of visas. Nonetheless, consulates proper will be headed by consuls of various ranks if such officials have little or no connection with the more limited sense of consular service. Activities of a consulate include protecting the interests of their citizens temporarily or permanently resident in the host country, issuing passports. However, the principal role of a consulate lies traditionally in promoting trade—assisting companies to invest and to import and export goods and services both inwardly to their home country and outward to their host country.
Although it is not admitted publicly, like embassies, may gather intelligence information from the assigned country. Contrary to popular belief, many of the staff of consulates may be career diplomats, but they do not have diplomatic immunity unless they are accredited as such. Immunities and privileges for consuls and accredited staff of consulates are limited to actions undertaken in their official capacity and, with respect to the consulate itself, to those required for official duties. In practice, the extension and application of consular privileges and immunities can differ from country to country. Consulates are more numerous than diplomatic missions, such as embassies. Ambassadors are posted only in a foreign nation'
Governor of the Bank of England
The Governor of the Bank of England is the most senior position in the Bank of England. It is nominally a civil service post, but the appointment tends to be from within the bank, with the incumbent grooming his or her successor; the Governor of the Bank of England is Chairman of the Monetary Policy Committee, with a major role in guiding national economic and monetary policy, is therefore one of the most important public officials in the United Kingdom. According to the original charter of 27 July 1694 the bank's affairs would be supervised by a Governor, a Deputy Governor, 24 directors. In its current incarnation, the Bank's Court of Directors has 12 members, of whom five are various designated executives of the Bank; the 120th and current Governor is the Canadian Mark Carney, appointed in 2013. He is the first non-Briton to be appointed to the post, but made a commitment to the Prime Minister to take up British citizenship. Chief Cashier of the Bank of England Deputy Governor of the Bank of England List of Governors of the Bank of England
Pound sterling
The pound sterling known as the pound and less referred to as sterling, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, the British Antarctic Territory, Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence. A number of nations that do not use sterling have currencies called the pound. Sterling is the third most-traded currency in the foreign exchange market, after the United States dollar, the euro. Together with those two currencies and the Chinese yuan, it forms the basket of currencies which calculate the value of IMF special drawing rights. Sterling is the third most-held reserve currency in global reserves; the British Crown dependencies of Guernsey and the Isle of Man produce their own local issues of sterling which are considered equivalent to UK sterling in their respective regions. The pound sterling is used in Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands, Saint Helena and Ascension Island in Saint Helena and Tristan da Cunha; the Bank of England is the central bank for the pound sterling, issuing its own coins and banknotes, regulating issuance of banknotes by private banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Banknotes issued by other jurisdictions are not regulated by the Bank of England. The full official name pound sterling, is used in formal contexts and when it is necessary to distinguish the United Kingdom currency from other currencies with the same name. Otherwise the term pound is used; the currency name is sometimes abbreviated to just sterling in the wholesale financial markets, but not when referring to specific amounts. The abbreviations "ster." and "stg." are sometimes used. The term "British pound" is sometimes incorrectly used in less formal contexts, it is not an official name of the currency; the exchange rate of the pound sterling against the US dollar is referred to as "cable" in the wholesale foreign exchange markets. The origins of this term are attributed to the fact that in the 1800s, the GBP/USD exchange rate was transmitted via transatlantic cable. Forex traders of GBP/USD are sometimes referred to as "cable dealers". GBP/USD is now the only currency pair with its own name in the foreign exchange markets, after IEP/USD, known as "wire" in the forward FX markets, no longer exists after the Irish Pound was replaced by the euro in 1999.
There is apparent convergence of opinion regarding the origin of the term "pound sterling", toward its derivation from the name of a small Norman silver coin, away from its association with Easterlings or other etymologies. Hence, the Oxford English Dictionary state that the "most plausible" etymology is derivation from the Old English steorra for "star" with the added diminutive suffix "-ling", to mean "little star" and to refer to a silver penny of the English Normans; as another established source notes, the compound expression was derived: However, the perceived narrow window of the issuance of this coin, the fact that coin designs changed in the period in question, led Philip Grierson to reject this in favour of a more complex theory. Another argument that the Hanseatic League was the origin for both the origin of its definition and manufacture, in its name is that the German name for the Baltic is "Ost See", or "East Sea", from this the Baltic merchants were called "Osterlings", or "Easterlings".
In 1260, Henry III granted them a charter of protection and land for their Kontor, the Steelyard of London, which by the 1340s was called "Easterlings Hall", or Esterlingeshalle. Because the League's money was not debased like that of England, English traders stipulated to be paid in pounds of the "Easterlings", contracted to "'sterling". For further discussion of the etymology of "sterling", see sterling silver; the currency sign for the pound is £, written with a single cross-bar, though a version with a double cross-bar is sometimes seen. This symbol derives from medieval Latin documents; the ISO 4217 currency code is GBP, formed from "GB", the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code for the United Kingdom, the first letter of "pound". It does not stand for "Great Britain Pound" or "Great British Pound"; the abbreviation "UKP" is used but this is non-standard because the ISO 3166 country code for the United Kingdom is GB. The Crown dependencies use their own codes: GGP, JEP and IMP. Stocks are traded in pence, so traders may refer to pence sterling, GBX, when listing stock prices.
A common slang term for the pound sterling or pound is quid, singular and plural, except in the common phrase "quids in!". The term may have come via Italian immigrants from "scudo", the name for a number of coins used in Italy until the 19th century.
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
The Department for Business and Industrial Strategy is a department of the government of the United Kingdom, created by Theresa May on 14 July 2016 following her appointment as Prime Minister, through a merger between the Department for Business and Skills and Department of Energy and Climate Change. BEIS brought together responsibility for business, industrial strategy, science and innovation with energy and climate change policy, merging the functions of the former BIS and DECC; the Ministers in the Department for Business and Industrial Strategy are as follows: In October 2016, Archie Norman was appointed as Lead Non Executive Board Member for the Department for Business and Industrial Strategy. The department is responsible for government policy in the following areas: Some policies apply to England alone due to devolution, while others are not devolved and therefore apply to other nations of the United Kingdom; some economic policies are devolved but many aspects of several important policy areas are reserved to Westminster.
Reserved and excepted matters are outlined below. Scotland Reserved matters: The Economy Directorate of the Scottish Government handles devolved economic policy. Northern Ireland Reserved matters: Business regulation and support Climate change policy Company law Competition Consumer protection Corporate governance Import and export control Employment relations Energy Export licensing Insolvency Intellectual property Nuclear energy Outer space Postal services Product standards and liability Research councils Science and research Telecommunications Time Trade associations Units of measurementExcepted matter: Outer space Nuclear powerThe department's main counterpart is: Department for the Economy
High commissioner (Commonwealth)
In the Commonwealth of Nations, a high commissioner is the senior diplomat in charge of the diplomatic mission of one Commonwealth government to another. Instead of an embassy, the diplomatic mission is called a high commission. In the British Empire, high commissioners were envoys of the Imperial government appointed to manage protectorates or groups of territories not under the sovereignty of the British Crown, while Crown colonies were administered by a governor, the most significant possessions, large confederations and the self-governing dominions were headed by a governor-general. For example, when Cyprus came under British administration in 1878 it remained nominally under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire; the representative of the British government and head of the administration was titled high commissioner until Cyprus became a Crown colony in 1925, when the incumbent high commissioner became the first governor. Another example were the high commissioners for Palestine. A high commissioner could be charged with the last phase of decolonisation, as in the Crown colony of the Seychelles, where the last governor became high commissioner in 1975, when self-rule under the Crown was granted, until 1976, when the archipelago became an independent republic within the Commonwealth.
As diplomatic residents were sometimes appointed to native rulers, high commissioners could be appointed as British agents of indirect rule over native states. Thus high commissioners could be charged with managing diplomatic relations with native rulers and their states, might have under them several resident commissioners or similar agents attached to each state. In regions of particular importance, a commissioner-general was appointed to have control over several high commissioners and governors, e.g. the commissioner-general for South-East Asia had responsibility for Malaya and British Borneo. The first high commissioner of India to London was appointed in 1920; the first agent of the Indian government was appointed to South Africa in 1927. Although not a dominion, the self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia was represented in the United Kingdom by a high commission in London, while the United Kingdom had a high commission in Salisbury. Following the Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the government of Ian Smith in 1965, the Rhodesian high commissioner, Andrew Skeen was expelled from London, while his British counterpart, Sir John Johnston, was withdrawn by the British government.
The role of high commissioner for Southern Africa was coupled with that of British governor of the Cape Colony in the 19th century, giving the colonial administrator in question responsibility both for administering British possessions and relating to neighbouring Boer settlements. The protectorates of Bechuanaland and Swaziland were administered as high commission territories by the Governor-General of the Union of South Africa, the British high commissioner for Bechuanaland and Swaziland until the 1930s, with various local representatives by the British high commissioner to South Africa, represented locally in each by a resident commissioner; the British governor of the Crown colony of the Straits Settlements, based in Singapore, doubled as high commissioner of the Federated Malay States, had authority over the resident-general in Kuala Lumpur, who in turn was responsible for the various residents appointed to the native rulers of the Malay states under British protection. The British Western Pacific Territories were permanently governed as a group of minor insular colonial territories, under one single, not full-time, Western Pacific high commissioner, an office attached first to the governorship of Fiji, subsequently to that of the Solomon Islands, represented in each of the other islands units: by a Resident Commissioner, Consul or other official.
The high commissioner to New Zealand ex officio is the governor of the Pitcairn Islands. The first dominion high commissioner was appointed by Canada as its envoy in London. Sir John Rose, 1st Baronet, a Canadian businessman resident in London and former Canadian finance minister, had acted as the personal representative of the Canadian prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald, from 1869 to 1874 and was given the title of Financial Commissioner from 1874 until 1880. Alexander Mackenzie, while he was prime minister, appointed Edward Jenkins a British Member of Parliament with links to Canada, to act as the government's representative in London as agents-general, followed by former Nova Scotia premier William Annand; when Macdonald returned to power in 1878 he requested to elevate the position of financial commissioner to resident minister, but was denied the request by the British government who instead offered to allow the designation of high commissioner. The Canadian government appointed Alexander Tilloch Galt as the first high commissioner of Canada to the United Kingdom in 1880.
New Zealand appointed a high commissioner in 1905, in place of a resident agent-general which have been appointed since 1871. Australia did the same in 1910, South Africa in 1911; the British government continued not to appoint high commissioners to the Dominions, holding that the British government was represented by the relevant governor-general or go
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
