420,000
12,345,000
Page 222
2
Hage mereafe34 one year, is five times the annual increases confeßla y3⁄4the Committee under the chairmanship of the Lord Chancellor which considered how the Drogheda Report might be implemented. And it would be optimistic to assume that in the course of next year, quite apart from any further rises in costs, new services will not be proposed involving still further expenditure.
4. I do not dispute that, taken individually, most of the items contributing to this big increase in the total expenditure are desirable and that they would not have been proposed if it had not been felt that we should get some return for them. Nevertheless when we consider, first, the large prospective increase in both defence and civil expenditure next year and, secondly, the paramount need (on balance-of-payments grounds) to restrict our overseas expenditure to a minimum, there can be no doubt that an increase of 18 per cent. in overseas information expenditure in one year is excessive.
5. There is a natural tendency, when new services are proposed in this field, simply to add them on to all the existing services. It seems to me that, when it is desired, as a matter of urgency and high priority, to embark on large additional expenditure in new directions, a very serious effort should be made to cover as much as possible of that expenditure by savings on services which, ex hypothesi, must be of less urgency and lower priority. The services to be curtailed would be either existing services or expansions and additions contemplated before the new, more urgent service was proposed.
The extra cost of £560,000 shown in paragraph 3 above for Middle East items, which was agreed by the Cabinet as a matter of great urgency, is a case in point. Although the Cabinet decided that this should be covered, at least to some extent, by savings on other services, I am advised that the Foreign Office see no prospect of being able to do this. I cannot agree that the matter should be left there.
6. I do not think it would be profitable for the Cabinet itself to attempt to decide in detail where economies should be made. But I would ask that we should decide on a round figure as the maximum total expenditure on overseas information services in 1956-57 and instruct the Departments concerned to allocate that figure among the various services, existing and proposed, by reference to some assessment of their relative priorities.
7. As to what the total figure should be, it seems to me that, in present circumstances, it would be making generous provision for this expenditure if we decided that the estimate for next year should be about 10 per cent. above the original estimate for the current year. I therefore ask the Cabinet to decide that the total provision for overseas information expenditure in 1956–57 should be £11,550,000.
263
Treasury Chambers, S.W. 1,
8th December, 1955.