The expectation often of ministers is that I come in, I've got this 180 billion.

These are my priorities, I want to move the money around.

And what's a bit of a shock is recognising how much of that money is already committed to just do the day job.

And the amounts of money to do new and different things sometimes is very small, if indeed there's any at all.

There's one great unreformed department in government,

and that's Treasury. Hello and welcome to the latest episode of our special inside briefing series

becoming a minister. In this series, former ministers and the civil servants who worked with them

reveal what it is really like to hold ministerial office and how to do

the job well. You will hear all about the challenges, the confusion, the decisions and drama of a job

which really is like no other. My name is Tim Durrant, program director for ministers at the

IFG. On this episode, we're talking about budgets, multi-billion pound budgets, because government departments

deal with major commercial contracts, infrastructure projects and financial investments,

and each employ thousands or tens of thousands of civil servants. For the ministers in charge,

getting used to managing budgets of this scale can be bamboozling and overwhelming, especially

if they haven't dealt with finances

in their previous careers. We'll hear from ministers about what it is like managing those budgets,

how to find savings in the department, and the advice they'd give to future ministers on how to

get on the right side of the Treasury. We'll also hear why ministers have less control over

spending than you and they might expect.

Money is a big part of being a minister.

They need to sign off spending decisions, negotiate with the Treasury over budgets,

and scrutinise what their department is spending money on.

...