Michael Gove on why elected politicians have to fight against 'Treasury brain'

Rachel Reeves is starting to make Danny Alexander look like a maverick economic expansionist, but maybe the reason they succumbed to orthodoxy lies in the Treasury rather within them.

Michael Gove, stay with me, spoke to Jo Timan of the Manchester Evening News, and the interview is discussed in today's Northern Agenda email from Rob Parsons:

Describing an issue that's all-too-familiar to Northern leaders, he criticised so-called “Treasury brain” in government​ ahead of a Budget due on October 30.

On the way in which civil servants review investments, he said: “The way it works unfortunately means that the nominal return, say, on improving train times between Guildford and London is weighted disproportionately in such a way that it looks much better in terms of bang for your buck than improving rail links between, say, Sheffield and Manchester.”

Mr Gove said the phrase “Treasury brain … speaks to two things”, and claimed officials would have raised concerns with the 1944 D-Day landings on the basis they were “novel and contentious”.

He said: “The Treasury is where the brightest brains are in government but it’s also the case that the Treasury brain – and it’s quite a small-c conservative thing – looks at different propositions and it takes the view: ‘Hmm, you sir are saying that if we invest now, we’ll secure all sorts of benefits later.

“‘I’ve heard that a hundred times. All I know is you’re calling on me to invest now, that means spending money. These benefits, they may never come.’

“So there’s a classic sort of Tory scepticism of utopianism within the Treasury, but the parallel to that is there’s also a scepticism of anything which is anything which is in Treasury phrase ‘novel and contentious’.”

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