38.
There are potentially serious implications if such a
high growth rate of 4% in the size of the Civil Service were to
continue. I have in mind the relationship between the size of
the civil service and that of the labour force as a whole. The
total labour force, which expanded by an average of 3.8% in the
1970's and 2.4% in the first part of this decade, is expected to
grow by only 1.4% for the remainder of this decade. Also, this
rapid growth in the size of the Civil Service occurs at a time
when the unemployment rate is particularly low. It may be
unavoidable in the short
in the short term, but it cannot be permitted to
continue indefinitely.
39.
In a period of sustained expenditure growth,
attention to priorities and to the effective deployment of
resources is particularly important. It is therefore essential that our systems for appraising resource allocation be further
refined. We aim to ensure that decisions are made in the
context of planning for several years ahead. The Medium Range
Forecast as an instrument to be utilised in the determination of
appropriate fiscal policies was one of the early developments in furtherance of this objective.
From this beginning, Our
developed to focus
financial planning machinery is being attention on relative priorities between programmes. There is
now an increasing emphasis in the budget documents on what is being done with money and what is being achieved.
/40. In
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