That is a successful way of running the budget process.In the bad old days when Peter Peacock and I were councillors, when councillors tried to communicate with the Government to ask what the settlement would be or where the money would go and why, they were up against a brick wall and, no matter how hard they tried, it was impossible to get to the answer. Occasionally, a minister would visit a local authority and listen politely, which might give some satisfaction, but the mechanism was not at all clear.