Saturday, 22 May 2010


TPA Bulletin - 21st May 2010

New coalition takes on TPA policies

Last week we summarised the latest news on your taxes just as the first details of the contract between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats were being revealed. One week on and we can present some more interesting policy detail, and it seems that a few long-standing TPA ideas are starting to take root in Westminster.

Moving towards transparency...

The new coalition government have unveiled their first key document – 'Our Programme for Government' – and there were certainly some encouraging snippets in there. All public salaries that are equal to or greater than the entry level salary for a senior civil servant – currently £58,500 – will have their pay and expenses published online. We have produced the Town Hall Rich List and Public Sector Rich List for four years now, and it seems like our campaign message is finally getting through. Pay transparency is vital to ensure that public sector bosses do not award themselves massive salaries and obscene pay rises.

All council spending over £500 will have to be published too, as will contracts and tender documents – great news. We’ve seen that transparent councils have been able to significantly cut their council tax, so measures like these will help taxpayers sniff out waste in their own local authorities. There’s also a promise to publish information in a standardised and usable format, so there should be no room for public bodies to fudge the figures.
Two more victories: the coalition government will scrap Comprehensive Area Assessments for councils and the Standards Board regime. Both of these are measures we suggested in our book "How to Cut Public Spending (and Still Win an Election)". Greater transparency will mean that councils will not simply spend cash making sure that they are looking smart on inspection day; and a comprehensive register of councillors’ interests will mean residents armed with information can keep their public officials honest. We’d save lots of money, too.
There’s some room for improvement, however. Central government contracts above £25,000 will be published too – which is an encouraging start – but this figure could be lower. If contracts were made public then we could finally encourage genuine competition and break the cosy relationships between some public bodies and contractors. Also, the new coalition want to bring in a ‘right-to-data’, where information on spending is available on request. Spending data should be automatically published, as it is in America. Taxpayers have a right to know how their money is spent.
If you'd like to read more about the TPA and the sort of reforms we would recommend then do take a closer look at our TPA Manifesto,available here!
...And responsibility

We’ve long said that in order to deal with the deficit and reduce debt, we need to be honest about the scale of the problem. The Office for Budget Responsibility is supposed to do exactly this. It’s a new body – set up on Monday – that will offer independent scrutiny to Treasury figures. Of course, it’s yet another quango, and one of the key ways to cut spending would be to abolish a big chunk of them. But it’s sufficiently independent to be candid about our financial situation. In the past governments have kept some of the debt off the books – hopefully we’ll start to see some more honesty and transparency so that we can begin to tackle the growing deficit.
The EU Rachet starts again!

It’s only been a week and a half for the new coalition Government and already the EU’s ratchet has started to turn. On Tuesday George Osborne went to his first EU meeting as Chancellor only to be overruled and outvoted on the disastrous AIFM directive which threatens to cripple the City of London’s profitable hedge fund industry (you can read Matthew Elliott’s piece in the Sunday Telegraph on the directivehere).

Today, David Cameron is in Germany meeting with Angela Merkel for discussions which are expected to be “frosty” on her proposals for a new EU Treaty. Yes, that’s right, despite the Lisbon Treaty having been so recently forced on us they are already pressing for more powers and new agreements. This time, in the aftermath of the appallingly expensive Greek bailout the Germans and others are pressing for the EU to be given greater control of Member States’ budgets. It would be totally unacceptable for the EU to get power over how our Government spends our taxes and manages our finances, and we will be opposing this move. On the plus side, there are opportunities here: this could well be the issue that finally gets us that EU referendum that politicians have slithered out of so many times before.

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If you'd like to become more involved and help the TPA in a practical way, then just emailfiona.mcevoy@taxpayersalliance.com for more information. Similarly, if you'd like to blog about tax or waste issues in your local area, email the same address and we'll give you details on how you could write for our flourishing new grassroots page on the TPA website!

Posted by Britannia Radio at 11:49