Britain: An official handbook > 1956

GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION
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cover their expenditure, district councils issue a requisition each year to the county
council; a town council has to meet an annual requisition from the county council
in respect of the burgh’s share of the expenditure on functions exercised by the
county council throughout the county, including the burgh. In Northern Ireland,
county councils are responsible for making, levying and collecting the rates, except
in such parts of the county as fall within the jurisdiction of the county borough,
borough, or urban district councils.
Loans may be raised by all types of local authority for items of capital expenditure
which could not well be met out of current revenue, subject to the approval of the
Government Department responsible for the service for which the capital is
required. Such loans may be raised either on the open market or from the Public
Works Loan Board, which was originally constituted under the Public Works
Loans Act, 1875, to make certain local loans out of moneys provided by the
Exchequer and which for a brief period (1945-52) was the only source from which
local authorities could normally borrow. Freedom to borrow on the open market
was restored to local authorities in January 1953 (see also P- 287).
Internal control of finance is exercised on behalf of the council concerned by a
finance Committee, whose function is to keep the financial policy of the council
under constant review. External control is carried out by means of an annual
audit, which in the case of all councils in England and Wales (except for certain
general accounts in about two-thirds of the borough councils) is operated by
district auditors appointed by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government.
Borough councils must use the services of the district auditor for accounts which
relate to education, national assistance, children, local health services, coast pro¬
tection, motor tax, rate collection, police, fire, civil defence and town and country
planning, but they may and sometimes do employ a professional firm of auditors
to do other work. In Scotland, all accounts are audited by a professional auditor
appointed by the Secretary of State for Scotland, and paid by the council.
THE LAW
The maintenance of public order in the United Kingdom is effected, generally
speaking, by two agencies—the judiciary and the police. Both are concerned in
different ways with the obedience of the citizen to the law.
Law is said to be based on the concepts of order and compulsion. In the legal
sense, it has been defined as any rule which will be enforced by the courts; as it
applies to a country, it is usually understood as the set of rules by which the
citizens of that country will expect to regulate their conduct in relation to their
fellow citizens and to the State.
There is no written code of law in the United Kingdom. The question whether
a particular rule is recognized as part of law is determined by consideration of the
authorities, which may be statutes, statements made by legal writers, or reports of
decided cases. If none of these exist, the judge uses a process of analogy, that is to
say, he bases his decision in a case on its similarity to a previous case in which
judgment has already been given.
1 he sources of law in the United Kingdom are statute law, common law which
is law recognized by the courts as binding on some other grounds than express
enactment, and equity. Statute law includes Acts of Parliament and delegated or
subordinate legislation made under powers conferred by Parliament (see pp. 32-33).
The origins of common law are to be found in the customs of the realm.
The greater part of statute law applies uniformly in all four countries of the
United Kingdom, although in many fields of legislation there are statutes applying