Norman Price (civil servant)
Sir Norman Charles Price, KCB (5 January 1915 – 19 February 2007) was a British civil servant.
Born on 5 January 1915,[1] he attended Plaistow Grammar School before entering the civil service in 1933 as an executive officer in HM Customs and Excise.[2] He moved to the Board of Inland Revenue in 1939 as a tax inspector;[3] from 1968 to 1973 he was its deputy chairman, and then in 1973 he succeeded Sir Arnold France as its chairman.[2] He was seen as an "insider", contrasted with several of his immediate predecessors who had been Treasury officials.[4] This was "seen as an aid to carrying through" reorganisation plans resulting from the government's proposed tax reforms and staff cuts.[2][5] He retired in 1976, and was succeeded by Sir William Pile.[3] Price was a member of the European Court of Auditors (ECA) from October 1977 to October 1983;[6] he was the first UK member of the ECA[7] and acted as its president from October to November 1977.[8]
Having been appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 1969 Birthday Honours,[9] he was promoted to Knight Commander (KCB) in the 1975 Birthday Honours.[10] He died on 19 February 2007.[1]
References
[edit]- ^ a b "Price, Sir Norman (Charles)", Who Was Who (online ed., Oxford University Press, 2024). Retrieved 28 June 2025.
- ^ a b c "'Insider' Chosen for Top Job at Inland Revenue", The Times (London), 22 February 1973, p. 21.
- ^ a b 119th Report of the Commissioners of Her Majesty's Inland Revenue (Cmnd 6734; 1977), p. 15.
- ^ "Giving the Inland Revenue a Social Conscience", The Times (London), 20 June 1973. p. 23.
- ^ These were proposals by the Heath government to replace the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system with a tax credit system; these constituted "the only serious attempt to depart from" PAYE in its history, but never came to fruition and were abandoned following the Conservative's defeat in the February 1974 general election. See: Peter Sloman, "'The Pragmatist's Solution to Poverty': The Heath Government’s Tax Credit Scheme and the Politics of Social Policy in the 1970s", Twentieth Century British History, vol. 27, no. 2 (June 2016), pp. 220–241.
- ^ "Former Members", European Court of Auditors. Retrieved 28 June 2025.
- ^ Paul Stephenson, Maria Luisa Sanchez Barrueco and Hartmut Aden, Financial Acountability in the European Union: Institutions, Policy and Practice (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), p. 71.
- ^ "Sir Norman Price", CVCE (University of Luxembourg). Retrieved 28 June 2025
- ^ The London Gazette, 6 June 1969 (supplement; issue 44863), p. 5963.
- ^ The London Gazette, 6 June 1975 (supplement; issue 46593), p. 7371.