The British navy’s 1888 budgetary reforms

Abstract

Reforms to the British navy’s estimates for 1888—9 radically changed the way that budgetary information was presented to parliament. Motivated by a desire to facilitate efficiency judgments about public expenditure, in the new-style estimates expenditure was classified according to object or purpose rather than on the basis of the traditional subjective categorizations. These reforms were instituted, in the face of strong Treasury opposition, almost as a fait accompli, by Mr Arthur Forwood (later Sir Arthur Forwood, Bt), Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Navy, supported by his senior minister, Lord George Hamilton, First Lord of the Admiralty, both of whom possessed unusually advanced ideas about public-sector efficiency and management. The article examines the background to and nature of the reforms and the unusual dynamics of the reform process, as well as attempting to ascertain their wider place in the history of governmental budgeting and accounting.