The finance bill: what the state budget actually commits

The finance bill is the act by which parliament authorises the government to collect revenue and commit expenditure for one year. Until it is passed, no new spending can lawfully be committed. It is the most political document there is: it turns intentions previously expressed in speeches into amounts.

The text reads in two parts. The first sets out expected resources — tax revenue, non-tax revenue, borrowing. The second allocates appropriations across ministries and institutions. The gap between the two is the deficit, and how that deficit is financed often says more than the amounts themselves.

A budget line is not spending that happened. It opens an authorisation. The execution rate — the share of appropriations actually spent by year end — measures the distance between announcement and action. That figure, published in the settlement act, is what allows a budget to be judged after the fact rather than on trust.

Three questions are enough to enter any budget: which revenues rise, and at whose expense; which ministries see their appropriations grow faster than average; and what share of the budget services debt rather than funding services. The answers sit in the annexes, rarely in the press releases.