476 • SECRET VOTE
The Economic Reform Act of 1782 established the source of funds
as a charge on the Civil List, available to the secretaries of state for
home and foreign affairs, with the foreign secretary being account-
able for it to the Treasury, via the Audit Office. The act also obliged
British ambassadors to swear affidavits within a year of returning to
London to confirm the nature of payments they had made. Records
survive of disbursements made during the French Revolution, includ-
ing payments in Berlin, St. Petersburg, Italy, Spain, and the Ottoman
Empire. In 1807 the foreign secretary, Lord Canning, authorized se-
cret payments of £100,000 to Prussia and £30,000 to Russia. The
amount of this expenditure grew to £120,000 during the Napoleonic
wars, but after 1815 dropped to £40,000. Numerous pensions were
paid to individuals who had helped the Crown.
In 1833 the secret service funds were transferred from the Civil
List to the Consolidated Fund. In July 1836 Lord Palmerston queried
the annual cost of £7,400 and set a pattern of politicians seeking to
cut covert budgets. As well as buying information on such diverse
topics as Russian fortifications on the Bosporus and Arab opinion on
the Red Sea coast, secret service funds were authorized in 1851 to
pay a French seaman named Botquelen £16 a year to compensate for
the loss of his ‘‘sight while on board the French whalerRonaldin his
efforts to save the crew of the English shipIndiawhen on fire at
sea. He was declared incurably blind in 1847.’’ Secret service funds
continued to be made available by the foreign secretary until 1909
when the Secret Service Bureau was established at an annual budget
of £7,400.SECRET VOTE.Budget approval for the annual expenditure ofsecret
service fundswas known as the secret vote and traditionally was pre-
sented to the chancellor of the Exchequer without further parliamen-
tary scrutiny. The cost of maintainingMI5, theSecret Intelligence
Service, andGCHQremained classified. The secret vote has been
replaced with thesingle intelligence vote(SIV).
SECRET WRITING.A communications technique intended to pre-
vent an intended reader of seeing a covert message, secret writing
was popular as a method of conveying messages in World War I and
World War II. British intelligence agencies researched chemical de-