Abstract

HM Treasury is the United Kingdom’s economic and finance ministry. In the British system of government, the Treasury’s power primarily derives from its role in allocating finance across all government departments. But who finances the financiers? In this lecture, Mario Pisani (Deputy Director at HM Treasury) will answer this question by analysing the information contained in twenty years of Treasury annual accounts.

These accounts allow us to understand the full range of resources available to finance the activities of HM Treasury – not only financial resources in the form of funding, expenditure, assets and liabilities, but also human resources, organisational culture, and key institutional partnerships such as that with the Bank of England.

Since the first set of audited resource accounts was produced, for the years 1999-2000 to 2018-19, the story of the Treasury is a tale of significant change coupled with surprising constancy. But what does the future hold?