Chancellor of the Exchequer his duty to distribute as fairly as he can." The chancellor has considerable control over other departments as it is the Treasury which sets Departmental Expenditure Limits. The amount of power this gives to an individual chancellor depends on his personal forcefulness, his status within his party and his relationship with the prime minister. Gordon Brown, who became chancellor when Labour came into Government in 1997, had a large personal power base in the party. Perhaps as a result, Tony Blair chose to keep him in the same position throughout his ten years as prime minister; making Brown an unusually
Exchequer of the Jews that duplicates should be taken of all Jewish debt records and kept in this or in other central repositories: "All the debts, pledges, mortgages, lands, houses, rents, and possessions of the Jews shall be registered ... no contract shall be made with, nor payment, made to, the Jews, nor any alteration made in the charters, except before the said persons". It was soon afterward found necessary to have a centre for the whole of Jewish business, and this was attached to the Exchequer of Westminster and called the "Exchequer of the Jews". The first recorded mention of this is in