Friday, 11 September 2009


TaxPayers' Alliance Bulletin - 11th September 2009
 
How to save £50 billion
 
Today, a joint report from the TPA and the highly-respected business organisation the Institute of Directors (IoD) started the real national debate about how to cut public spending. In a week where Alastair Darling, George Osborne and David Cameron all expressed concern about the dire state of the public finances but refused to discuss the specific spending cuts that are necessary, the report provided for the first time a detailed programme of 34 steps to reduce public spending by £50 billion a year.
 
As well as laying out exactly how to make such sizeable savings, the report discusses the urgent need for reductions in public expenditure, and compares the behaviour of the public sector, which has continued to grow through the recession, to the widespread streamlining and belt-tightening that businesses and ordinary families have been forced to carry out in order to remain afloat. Notably, the report does not rely on generalised efficiency savings, but on reducing or removing unproductive items of government expenditure that don’t work, or are not essential. 
 
This is a crucial development in our campaign to reduce the national debt and the tax burden. It is groundbreaking that while politicians are dodging the difficult questions, the TPA and the IoD have been able to be honest with the public about the tough decisions that must be made to even start to balance the books. We don't pretend that some of these measures aren't controversial, and some of them may well be painful, but the issue must be dealt with properly - and we believe that means an honest and open public debate. We have carefully considered and explained every single measure, in order to minimise the impact on front line services whilst producing a total saving that will make a desperately needed reduction in the deficit. The excellent media coverage the report has had today guarantees that, in the words of BBC Radio 4's Today Programme this morning when discussing the report, "these sort of issues cannot be ducked by any Government."
 
The full report can be read here.
 
Here is a summary of the media coverage so far:
 
Daily Mail, How to save £50bn: Business chiefs issue blueprint for slashing costs and challenge Darling and Cameron to follow it
Daily Mail, 30 Second Guide: The Taxpayers Alliance
Daily Express, Call for £50bn public spending cut
New York Times, Business Lobby Urges Pension Freeze
The Times, Will defence groups keep a united front? 
Financial Times, Tories focus on cuts to reduce deficit
The Scotsman, Pensions and public sector in firing line 'to save taxpayer £50bn'
Evening Standard, Call for £50bn public spending cut to ease UK debt crisis
The Guardian, Child benefits in Tory lobbyists' £50bn spending-cut plan
Daily Mirror, Kevin Maguire: Where There's A Will
City AM, Britain needs very large spending cuts
BBC News Online, Unions confront Brown over jobs
New Statesman, Brown to meet union leaders over spending cuts
Local Government Chronicle, Report calls for local government pay freeze
Cambridge News, Call for £50bn public spending cut
Oxford Times, Call for £50bn public spending cut
East Anglian Daily Times, Massive cuts to save £50bn
South Yorkshire Star, Call for £50bn public spending cut
Interactive Investor, Business lobby urges pension freeze
Nursing Times, Directors call on NHS to slash 10% of non-frontline jobs 
Forbes, UK business lobby urges pension freeze, child benefit cut
Children & Young People Now, Government urged to scrap Sure Start and save millions
Money News, HSBC advises 3rd year students to budget carefully
America Blog, British 'anti-tax' conservatives rear their ugly heads 
FinFacts Ireland, Friday Newspaper Review - Irish Business News and International Stories 
Politics.co.uk, 'No love in' as unions meet with PM
Politics.co.uk, Public Spending
Publicservice.co.uk, Thirty ways to save £50bn a year
Politics.co.uk, Knives out for spending cuts debate
Epolitix, Report calls for £50bn public spending cut
Professional Pensions, TaxPayers’ Alliance and IOD urge government to freeze state pensions
Public Servant Scotland, Call to freeze Scots' grant
Inside Housing, Sharpening the Axe
 
The report appeared twice on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme (here - 52 mins 30 secs in and here), including a discussion with Miles Templeman, Director-General at the IoD, and Tony Dolphin, Chief Economist at the IPPR. The report was also discussed twice on global business channel CNBC (one clip available here), three times on BBC Radio 5 Live, on the BBC One O'Clock and Six O'clock News, on the Sky News Channel, the BBC News Channel,BBC Radio Wales and BBC Radio Scotland as well as a host of other broadcast media. 

Preventing Violent Extremism
 
Earlier in the week, we also launched a major report in our Council Spending Uncovered series revealing for the first time the details of the Prevent Strategy, a fund distributed by local councils in order to stop people from becoming terrorists. The Government claimed to be unable to provide information on how the money had been spent, so the TPA compiled it using the Freedom of Information Act. Since Prevent began, there have been ongoing concerns about the groups receiving funding and it has not been clear how taxpayers’ money has been spent. As a result of this report, for the first time spending on the Prevent Strategy is listed in detail to show how much each organisation received individually in the 2006-07, 2007-08 and 2008-09 financial years.
 
As well as highlighting the importance of properly monitoring how taxpayers' money is spent, the report discovered that £12 million has so far been distributed under the scheme. The report concludes that skilled policing and robust intelligence are the most effective ways of tackling violent extremism, and these millions of pounds of taxpayers' money could have been far better spent. Government and/or councils need to accept that there are serious flaws in the Prevent scheme and consider its immediate abolition. Encouragingly, since the report's publication the Department of Communities and Local Government have already issued new guidelines on how Prevent funds are allocated.
 
The full report can be read here.  
 
The report received some great media coverage, including:
 

Yesterday we were in Norwich supporting Barbara Lockwood who has withheld part of her council tax increase.  This is the 4th time she has been taken to court and continues to fight on.  This time we scored a slight victory in winning an adjournment for Barbara.  You can read our report here.

Tim Aker: Moving On

After two and a half wonderful years at the TPA, our grassroots coordinator Tim Aker is moving on to pastures new. As the thousands of you who have commnicated with Tim in that time will know, he has been a great asset to the TPA's work and we are sorry to see him leave. We'll miss him just as much as you all will. In Tim's leaving message to the TPA's supporters, he says:

"To those of you I’ve met, corresponded with and campaigned with, thank you.  Getting to know so many of you so well has made this job a complete wonder.  Your ideas to how we can set this country free have influenced my own personal beliefs.  Your determination to fight on, regardless, has been inspirational.  Your calls and emails have made no two days the same.

I’m delighted to say that I leave our grassroots organisation bigger, stronger and more determined to fight those who squander our money. We have done so much, but there is so much left to do. Keep up the wonderful work.  Never give in and never let up in the fight for lower taxes.

Good luck and best wishes to all of you in the future."

You can read Tim’s full leaving message here.
 
While we look for a replacement for Tim, it may of course take a little longer to respond to enquiries from supporters and the public, which in the interim will be dealt with by the wider team, so please bear with us if you experience a slight delay from the normally prompt service!
 
Best of the blogs
 
Non-job of the week: Newham Council: Communications Manager  
 

Posted by Britannia Radio at 21:19