Since you will be receiving comments on many aspects of this project, I will focus on two on which I have a particular personal perspective.

       The first is the difference in organisation between this project and the Meade Report.  With individuals of the stature of Meade and Mirrlees, it is necessary, and appropriate, to design the structure around them.  James Meade had a particular style of working:  he would engage in every issue himself in detail and insist on working everything out again from first principles.  Mirrlees will want, and make use of, the support of other established scholars in areas where he lacks specific expertise.  This dictates a differently structured group and this is exactly what the organisers have done.  And, although both individuals were theorists, I would expect Mirrlees to be more concerned to structure the argument empirically, with more international material.  Again, this is part of the design.

       Moreover, as is hinted at in discussion, Meade Committee members other than Meade himself, Ironside and the secretaries in reality played little role.  I am sure it is right not to have a Royal Commission type list of great and good ostensibly attached to the project – or certainly not necessary to the output.

       You will not be surprised that I am pleased that Kay and King is cited as the benchmark for the style of the Report.  There is, however, an important issue here.  Kay and King exists essentially because throughout the project I kept asking ‘where do we say what’s wrong with the existing system?’   I felt I never got an answer:  in James Meade’s approach to problems, what was wrong with the existing system was that it was not the system you would devise if you started from scratch.  Mervyn and I continued to feel that that was not enough, and ultimately saw that we could get what we thought was necessary only by writing it ourselves.  Since Mirrlees has a similar (though less extreme) tendency (perhaps it is inevitable in high theorists) I feel it is important that the perspective that relates recommendations constantly to current unsatisfactory reality is maintained.

       The current unsatisfactory reality is, however, less unsatisfactory than the one we confronted in the late 1970s.  That is, in part, a tribute to the indirect but profound influence of ideas that Keynes described so eloquently, and the reason I hope you will support this proposal.