TREASURY PAPERS
Series One: Papers of the Economic Section, 1941-1961 (Public Record Office Class T 230)

Part 3: T 230/74-109

Produced within approximately the same period, 1940-1948, as the files covered in Parts 1 and 2, the documents in Part 3 address many of the major economic questions of the day.

There is material covering such subjects as:

International monetary policy
The Bretton Woods Conference
Tripartite talks on Germany
Reconstruction Committee
Investment
Nationalisation of the iron and steel industry
Mutual Aid
National debt
National income and expenditure
National Insurance
Plans for transferring certain industries to public ownership
OEEC long-term planning

Within these files there are memoranda and papers by J E Meade, J M Keynes,
W Eady and H D Henderson.

By studying these papers, together with the memoranda, minutes, correspondence, forecasts, statistics and comments of the Economic Section, scholars will gain a unique insight into the influence, views and theories of the government economists who played such an important role in the shaping of post-war Britain.

From T 230/102, the following extract shows how the Economic Section saw their role as transcending merely financial matters and touching upon all aspects of British life, including social engineering:

"Mr Chester has prepared the accompanying papers on certain further aspects of the social security plan. On the question of Children’s allowances, perhaps I might make the following general observations.
It is clear, from the most cursory examination of the finance of the Beveridge Scheme, that children’s allowances are among the most flexible elements. While it is extremely difficult to economise in many other directions, here economies can be made without obvious dislocation of the remainder.
This, I feel is unfortunate. For on broad social grounds, if there exists a margin for increased expenditure, the claims of expenditure on childhood and youth come very high up in the list. Extra money spent on pensions will no doubt have a direct effect on the happiness of the recipients. But it will do nothing to increase productivity; it will do nothing to assure the future of the race. Moreover, so far as I can see, its effects on the incentive to work are not likely to be positive.
Children’s allowances, on the other hand, do all these things - in greater or less degree. By increasing the income of the family man in work, and thereby increasing the margin between work income and relief, they increase the incentive not to remain idle. By increasing provision for child welfare, they raise the standard of health, and hence the productivity of the working population of the future. By making provision for large families they may do something to arrest the tendency to a decline in the birth rate."