The Barnett formula is a mechanism used by The Treasury in the United Kingdom to adjust the amounts of public expenditure allocated to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales automatically to reflect changes in spending levels allocated to public services in England, England and Wales or Great Britain, as appropriate.
The formula is named after Joel Barnett, who devised it in the late 1970s, while Chief Secretary to the Treasury as a way of allocating additional or reduced finance based on population (and not need) as a short-term solution to minor Cabinet disputes in the runup to the planned devolution in 1979. It has been retained by Conservative Governments of 1979 to 1997 under Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major, by Labour Governments after 1997 under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and the current interparty Government of David Cameron, with the Government declaring its intention to continue to use it as the basis for funding the three devolved governments.
The Barnett formula is said to have "no legal standing or democratic justification", and, being merely a convention, could be changed by the Treasury at will. In recent years, Barnett has called for a review of its long-term viability.
Read more about Barnett Formula: How The Formula Works, Controversy
Famous quotes containing the words barnett and/or formula:
“The intelligent employer encourages challenge, questioning—not blind acceptance and “our Leader knows best” acclaim.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Hidden away amongst Aschenbach’s writing was a passage directly asserting that nearly all the great things that exist owe their existence to a defiant despite: it is despite grief and anguish, despite poverty, loneliness, bodily weakness, vice and passion and a thousand inhibitions, that they have come into being at all. But this was more than an observation, it was an experience, it was positively the formula of his life and his fame, the key to his work.”
—Thomas Mann (18751955)