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Remember this from Wed? John Bercow upbraiding the Chancellor for grandstanding rather than getting on with the spending review. Tempting as it is to dismiss this as yet more eccentric behaviour in Parliament it sheds light on a worrying problem with the way we run the economy 1/
The reason the speaker told @sajidjavid off was because he was behaving as if he was giving a Budget speech, giving a long preamble abt the state of the economy and making political points. But this wasn't a Budget. It was a Spending Review. The two things are very different 2/
Most obviously, Budgets are for taxes and broader economic policy. Spending reviews are purely for departmental spending. Which isn't even all spending (see the pie chart here). But the other big difference is the level of scrutiny... 3/ 
Budgets involve a lengthy & involved Parliamentary process of debates & votes (culminating in Finance Bill). They can be picked apart and sometimes key policies get ditched along the way. No10 clearly realised they'd never survive that process. So no Budget before an election 4/
Spending Reviews, on other hand, entail only the barest Parliamentary scrutiny. They're usually rubber-stamped through something known as the estimates process. A spending bill hasn't been voted down in 100yrs. Equally importantly it doesn't have to be voted on til next Spring 5/
Hence, I suspect, why Bercow was irked by the Chancellor on Wed. If he was too frit to have a Budget why was he behaving like he was having one? But there is a more imp issue here. UK has plenty of checks on a govt trying to impose new TAXES but v v few on it SPENDING money 6/
Not only do spending reviews get barely any parliamentary scrutiny, they're not looked over by the @OBR_UK, so the Chancellor can get away with claiming he met the fiscal rules when he clearly hasn't. There's no rule on when they should be and how long they should cover 7/
When you think about this it's clearly bonkers. We like to think we're a sophisticated economy yet when it comes to these crucial economic decisions abt where OUR money is spent, Downing St can basically do what it wants. It's banana republic territory 8/
That might sound OTT but consider the Open Budget Index. internationalbudget.org/open-budget-su… Not long ago the UK was considered to have the world's most transparent approach to economic policy. Today it's falling down the rankings. Why? In large part because of the way we manage spending 9/
This week's spending review was a good example. It was called with barely a week's notice. It involved major shifts in econ policy, an end to austerity and the effective ditching of the fiscal rules, and the Chancellor could do this with only the barest scrutiny 10/
Now on the one hand this might all be moot. There might be an election and Mr Javid might not be Chancellor in a few weeks' time. But in that case we might have a Labour Chancellor intent on spending even more. Again, with limited Parliamentary scrutiny. Without OBR oversight 11/
Something needs to be done. One solution, which former HMT perm sec @nickmacpherson2 and others have called for, is creation of a Commons Budget Committee charged with examining spending BEFORE it happens. There was a report on this earlier this yr 12/ publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cm…
Another is to get the OBR involved so Chancellors can't fiddle the rules (as per this week). You could introduce rules forcing them to hold spending reviews at regular intervals so they can't force them through the Commons ahead of an election (as per this week) 13/
Broader point: we may now be in an extended period of minority governments. Yet our unwritten constitution and institutions simply aren't set up for it. Spending only one example - but one worth pondering. This and more in my @thetimes column 14/14 thetimes.co.uk/article/its-ti…
