The Downing Street Years

by Margaret Thatcher

  Geoffrey spelt out to Cabinet how difficult the economic situation at home and abroad had now become. Inflation in the major economies had risen sharply, oil prices had doubled, and the world was moving further into recession — led in this direction by Jimmy Carter’s United States. Although output in the UK had fallen rather less than predicted in 1980, it was likely in consequence to fall faster than expected in 1981. Inflation was slowing, but less rapidly than we had hoped. The background to the public spending round and to next year’s budget was, therefore, bleak. Then the discussion began. Some ministers argued for large increases in spending to stave off unemployment; others argued for prudence. I summed up by reaffirming the present strategy and noting the need to maintain public spending constraints, to reduce public sector pay increases and so to allow government borrowing and interest rates to fall — although within spending totals I was keen to see a higher priority given to dealing with unemployment, especially among young people. Round one went to Geoffrey and me.

  But the debate continued inside and outside government. The “wets” arguments came in different forms of varying sophistication, though their central message was always the same: spend and borrow more. They used to argue that we needed extra public spending on employment and industrial schemes, over and above what we had planned and were effectively forced to spend simply as a result of the recession. But this did not escape from the fact that extra public spending — whatever it was spent on — had to come from somewhere. And ‘somewhere’ meant either taxes levied on private individuals and industry; or borrowing, pushing up interest rates; or printing money, setting off inflation. There was also a feeling, which I equally knew I had to resist, that the refunds which I had secured from the European Community budget should be used to finance extra spending. But why should it be assumed that public spending was better than private spending? Why should the fruits of my efforts to rein in the appetite of the European Community automatically be consumed by an almost as insatiable British public sector? I was, therefore, determined to ensure that the Cabinet endorsed the 1981–2 public expenditure total announced in the previous white paper, as reduced by the European budget receipts.

  These basic differences between us came out clearly at the public spending Cabinet on 10 July. Some ministers argued that the PSBR should be allowed to increase to accommodate the huge new requirements of the loss-making nationalized industries. But the PSBR was already far too high, whatever the theoretical merits or otherwise of letting public borrowing rise in a recession. The higher it went, the greater the pressure to raise interest rates in order to persuade people to lend the Government the necessary funds. And at a certain point — if pushed too far — there would be the risk of a full-scale government funding crisis — that is, when you cannot finance your borrowing from the non-banking sector. We could not risk going further in that direction. So I emphasized once again the need to stay within the public spending plans — though within them there could be more priority given to assistance for jobs.

  The defence budget was a special problem. We had already accepted the NATO commitment for annual 3 per cent real increases in our defence spending. This had the obvious merit of demonstrating to the Soviets our determination to prevent their winning the arms race on which they had embarked, but in two other respects it was unsatisfactory. First, it meant that the MoD had little incentive to get value for money in the hugely expensive equipment it purchased. Second, the 3 per cent commitment meant that Britain, spending a substantially higher proportion of its GDP on defence than other European countries and going through a peculiarly deep recession, found herself bearing an unfair and increasing burden. There were also problems relating to management of the MoD budget. By the end of 1980 the MoD had overspent its cash limit because, with the depressed state of industry, suppliers had fulfilled government orders faster than expected.

  As we moved into the winter of 1980 the economic difficulties accumulated and the political pressure built up. It might have been easier to gain support in the battle for tight control of public spending if the second element of the strategy — the money supply — had been behaving predictably. But it had not. On Wednesday 3 September Geoffrey Howe and I met to discuss the monetary position. What did the figures really mean? Measured in terms of £M3, the money supply had been rising much faster than the target we had set in the MTFS at the time of the March budget. It was hard to know how much of this was the result of our removing exchange controls in 1979 and our decision in June to remove the ‘corset’ — a device by which the Bank of England imposed limits on bank lending. Money analysts argued that both of these liberalizations had misleadingly bloated the £M3 figures.* As I put it to Brian Waiden in an interview on Sunday 1 February:

  a corset is there to conceal the underlying bulges, not to deal with them, and when you take it off you might see that the bulges are worse.

  By contrast, some of the other monetary measures were undershooting their targets. The ‘wets’ found the wayward behaviour of £M3 a suitable subject for mockery at dinner parties. But for Geoffrey and me it was no such diversion. The arguments about which was the most accurate measure of the money supply were highly technical, but they were of great significance.

  Of course, we never just looked at monetary figures to gauge what was happening. We also looked at the real world around us. And what we saw told a somewhat different tale from the high £M3 figures. Inflation had slowed down markedly, particularly prices in the shops where competition was intense. Sterling was very strong, averaging just below $2.40 during the second half of 1980. And here the crucial issue was whether the high exchange rate was more or less an independent factor bringing down inflation, or rather a result of the monetary squeeze being tighter than we intended and than the £M3 figures suggested.

  Some of my closest advisers thought the latter. Professor Douglas Hague sent me a paper in which he described our policies as ‘lopsided’ in two respects: first, they were bearing down more heavily on the private than the public sector (which I knew to be true), and second, they were putting too much emphasis on controlling the money supply and too little on controlling the PSBR, with the result that interest rates were higher than they should have been. (I also came to share this view over the next year.) In the summer of 1980 I consulted Alan Walters, who was to join me at the beginning of 1981 as my economic policy adviser at No. 10 and upon whose judgement I came more and more to rely. Alan’s view was that the monetary squeeze was too tight and that it was the narrowest definition of ‘money’, known as the monetary base, which was the best, indeed the only reliable, star to steer by. Certainly, during the autumn of 1980 the narrowest definitions of money suggested that we were pursuing a very severe monetary policy.

  If there was uncertainty about the monetary position at this time, there was none at all about the trend in public spending, which was inexorably upwards. Public sector pay was one of the worst problems: the bills we received were largely the legacy of Labour’s failed incomes policy, but they had to be paid all the same, and they set a higher base for future settlements as well. The other main culprit for the enormous increase in public spending was, as I have said, the nationalized industries. Looking at the disappointing figures emerging from the public expenditure round, I wrote at the time that they ‘had undermined the Government’s whole public expenditure strategy’. But there was worse to come.

  In September, Geoffrey Howe sent me a note elaborating on the warning he had already given to Cabinet about public expenditure. The increases required for the nationalized industries, particularly BSC, would require larger cuts in programmes than those agreed in July in order to hold the total. To the extent that more was provided, as the Cabinet wished, for industrial support and employment, the corresponding cuts would need to be larger still. The fifth public expenditure round in sixteen months was bound to prompt squeals of indignation: and so it proved.

  Indeed, a further note from Geoffrey in early October confirmed t
hat the position was, if anything, deteriorating: the figures were worse than suggested the previous month. The latest forecast of the PSBR for 1981–2 approached £11 billion, far higher than planned. The Treasury had already begun to examine ways in which it might be reduced and were looking at the possibility of increasing taxes on the profits from North Sea oil and gas, raising employees’ national insurance contributions and not fully indexing personal income tax allowances in line with inflation. All of these unpalatable tax options reinforced the necessity for further public spending cuts: we needed a cash limits squeeze on all programmes and a cut in local authority current spending, and we would have to look again at defence spending and at the even more politically sensitive social security budget. (The social security budget accounted for a quarter of total public spending, of which the cost of retirement pensions was by far the largest element. But I had pledged publicly that the latter would be raised in line with inflation during the Parliament.) We were entering perilous waters.

  The tactics in handling the new public expenditure discussions were obviously very important. Geoffrey and I decided not to take the whole matter to Cabinet cold, as it were, so I called a meeting of key ministers to go into it first. The Chancellor described the position and outlined the arithmetic.

  Our plan succeeded. Without too much grumbling, the Cabinet of 30 October endorsed the strategy and confirmed our objective of keeping public spending in 1981–2 and later years broadly at the levels set out in the March white paper. This meant that it would be necessary to make cuts of the order of magnitude proposed by the Treasury — though even with these reductions we would be forced to increase taxes if we were to bring the PSBR down to a level compatible with lower interest rates.

  Much stronger Cabinet opposition surfaced when we began to look at the decisions required to give effect to the strategy which had been endorsed. The ‘wets’ now discovered a new approach. They claimed that they lacked sufficient information to judge whether the overall strategy was soundly based. Without this, they said, they were in no position to weigh the economic, political and social consequences of all the various means of achieving it, including changes in taxation and reductions in public spending. The ploy was transparent. In effect, spending ministers were trying to behave as if they were Chancellors of the Exchequer. It would be a recipe for complete absence of spending control and thus for economic chaos.

  The three most important areas of discussion at our meeting on Tuesday 4 November were the Health Service and defence budgets, and the special employment measures which Jim Prior wanted. On Health, we decided that the NHS element in the National Insurance Contribution should be raised rather than the health programme itself reduced — so continuing to honour our manifesto pledge. On defence, the Cabinet accepted that the reductions would have to fall somewhere between what the Treasury demanded and the MoD was then offering. Finally, we agreed on the special employment measures, which I later announced in my speech on the Address, and which provided for 440,000 places on the Youth Opportunities Programme — 180,000 more than in the current year.

  Two days later, Cabinet met again to continue the discussion. The financial position of the nationalized industries had worsened even in the short time since we had begun our spending review. Public sector pay was still a headache. If we managed to hold future public service pay increases to 6 per cent, as we wished, we could still expect a PSBR of £12 billion in 1981–2, compared with the £7.5 billion implied by the MTFS. It would not be possible to finance a PSBR of this size and reduce interest rates at the same time. Therefore, in order to avoid high interest rates substantial tax increases would be needed. In my summing up I noted that the position would be still worse, if reductions still under discussion — including defence, social security and education — were not actually agreed. In fact, Cabinet made the final decisions about the package the following week.

  The Autumn Statement on 24 November 1980, therefore, contained some highly unpopular measures. Employees’ National Insurance Contributions had to go up. Retirement pensions and other social security benefits would be increased by 1 per cent less than the rate of inflation next year if they turned out to have risen by 1 per cent more in the present year. There were cuts in defence and local government spending. It was announced that a new supplementary tax would be introduced on North Sea oil profits. However, there was some good news: the further employment measures — and a 2 percentage point cut in MLR.

  DISSENT BY LEAKS

  Few members of the public are experts in the finer matters of economics — though most have a shrewd sense when promises do not add up. By the end of 1980 I began to feel that we risked forfeiting the public’s confidence in our economic strategy. Unpopularity I could live with. But loss of confidence in our capacity to deliver our economic programme was far more dangerous. We were now spending more when we believed in spending less; inflation was high when we proclaimed the primacy of bringing it down; and private industry was faltering when we had been saying for years that only successful free enterprise could make a country wealthy. Of course, we could point to factors over which we had little or no control, and above all to the world recession; and on inflation and pay settlements there was movement in the right direction. But our credibility was at stake. And the very last thing I could afford was well-publicized dissent from within the Cabinet itself. Yet this was what I now had to face.

  Public dissent from the ‘wets’ was phrased in what was obviously intended to be a highly sophisticated code, in which each phrase had a half-hidden meaning and philosophical abstractions were woven together to condemn practical policies by innuendo. This cloaked and indirect approach has never been my style and I felt contempt for it. I thrive on honest argument. I am interested in practical options. And I prefer to debate my opponents rather than to undermine them with leaks. I do not believe that collective responsibility is an interesting fiction, but a point of principle. My experience is that a number of the men I have dealt with in politics demonstrate precisely those characteristics which they attribute to women — vanity and an inability to make tough decisions. There are also certain kinds of men who simply cannot abide working for a woman. They are quite prepared to make every allowance for ‘the weaker sex’: but if a woman asks no special privileges and expects to be judged solely by what she is and does, this is found gravely and unforgivably disorienting. Of course, in the eyes of the ‘wet’ Tory establishment I was not only a woman, but ‘that woman’, someone not just of a different sex, but of a different class, a person with an alarming conviction that the values and virtues of middle England should be brought to bear on the problems which the establishment consensus had created. I offended on many counts.

  The economic and public expenditure discussions of 1980 repeatedly found their way into the press; decisions came to be seen as victories by one side or the other and Bernard Ingham told me that it was proving quite impossible to convey a sense of unity and purpose in this climate. During 1980 the public was treated to a series of speeches and lectures by Ian Gilmour and Norman St John Stevas on the shortcomings of monetarism, which, according to them, was deeply un-Tory, a kind of alien dogma — though they usually took care to cover themselves against charges of disloyalty by including some fulsome remarks praising me and the Government’s approach. Speaking in Cambridge in November, Ian Gilmour claimed that Britain risked ‘the creation of a “Clockwork Orange” society with all its attendant alienation and misery’, which sounded remarkably like Britain in the ‘winter of discontent’.

  Industrial leaders helped worsen the general impression of disarray: in the same month the new Director-General of the CBI was promising ‘a bare knuckle fight’ over Government policies, though when I met the CBI shortly afterwards I am glad to say that knuckles were not in evidence. Then in December Jim Prior was reported as urging us not to use the language of the ‘academic seminar’. But perhaps the most astonishing remark — not his last — was John Biffen’s widely repor
ted admission to the Conservative Party Parliamentary Finance Committee that he did not share the enthusiasm for the MTFS, which he — the Chief Secretary to the Treasury — was trying, with singularly little success, to apply in the field of public expenditure. Not surprisingly, when I met the executive of the ‘22 Committee later that month I found that they had a low view of ministerial efforts at presentation. I most certainly agreed. But it was not simply a question of presentation: some ministers were trying to discredit the strategy itself. This could not be allowed to continue.

  I had the Christmas holiday to consider what should be done. I decided that it was time to reshuffle the Cabinet. The only question was whether a limited reshuffle would serve to change the balance sufficiently in favour of our economic strategy, or whether much more far-reaching changes were required. I decided on the former.

  On Monday 5 January I made the changes, beginning with Norman St John Stevas, who left the Government. I was sorry to lose Norman but he made his own departure inevitable. He had a first-class brain and a ready wit. But he turned indiscretion into a political principle. His jokes at the expense of government policy moved smoothly from private conversation to Commons gossip to the front page of newspapers. The other departure, Angus Maude, had employed his own sharp wit in my support but he felt that it was time to give up the job as Paymaster-General, in charge of government information, in order to return to writing. I moved John Nott to Defence to replace Francis Pym. I was convinced that someone with real understanding of finance and a commitment to efficiency was needed in this department. I moved John Biffen to replace John Nott at Trade, and at Geoffrey Howe’s request appointed Leon Brittan as Chief Secretary. Leon Brittan was a close friend of Geoffrey’s. He was enormously intelligent and hard-working and he had impressed me with the sharpness of his mind, particularly in Opposition when he had been one of the Party’s spokesmen on the then vexed issue of Devolution. Two very talented new Ministers of State came into the Department of Industry to support Keith Joseph: Norman Tebbit and Kenneth Baker. Norman had worked closely with me in Opposition. I knew that he was totally committed to our policies, shared much of my own outlook and was a devastating Commons in-fighter. Ken was given special responsibility for Information Technology, a task in which he showed his talents as a brilliant presenter of policy. Francis Pym took over the task of disseminating government information, which he combined with the position of Leader of the House of Commons. But the first half of this appointment was to prove a source of some difficulty in the months ahead.