Britannia Radio

TPA Bulletin - 17th September 2010

TUC annual meeting

This week trade unions have been meeting in Manchester to oppose necessary spending cuts and discuss striking in response. Recent TPA research has found that their political activity is largely funded by unwitting taxpayers; as much as £85.5 million last year alone. Their bosses – who threaten to bring key public services to a standstill – are extremely well remunerated, demonstrating a hypocrisy that only hurts the employees they represent and all taxpayers. The case for reducing spending is clear but it is one that the union dinosaurs refuse to accept.

However, there was one delegate at the conference who showed that there are some public sector bosses still living in reality. Tony McGuirk, the chief officer of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, said at a seminar that there were clear examples of waste in the public sector that could be cut, and frontline services could improve because of it. For example, he tackled absence rates in his force and has reduced the number of fire fighters too, as well as a number of other measures. The result? He has overseen a 60 per cent drop in fire-related deaths and injuries fell by 70 per cent. If only more of the delegates up in Manchester this week had as much sense. Our Policy Analyst, Jennifer Dunn, wrote a great blog about his comments - click here to read it.

TPA staff were on the airwaves for much of this week pressing home the message that spending cuts are necessary and will not create the awful consequences that TUC delegates would have us believe. Looking at the budget figures, spending in 5 years as a proportion of GDP will go back to 2006-07 levels. Remember the “dark, brutish and frightening place” that Britain was then? No, neither do we. Click here to see our Director Matt Sinclair make these points to Green Party Leader Caroline Lucas on the Daily Politics.

New Facebook page

We've recently established a new Facebook page for the TPA. This replaces our older TPA group, and has many advantages for an organisation like ours: greater interaction, better applications, and more complete event management, for example. This will allow us to develop a far better long-term relationship with you, our friends and supporters.

We therefore kindly invite you to become a fan of our new, fully-featured TPA Facebook page, which can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/taxpayersalliance. Please do share this with your friends and invite them to 'like' it!

What we knew all along – public sector pay outstrips private sector

It was splashed across the front pages of the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) confirmed this week that pay in the public sector is more generous than in the private sector. As our Research Fellow Mike Denham pointed out in this excellent blog post, the ONS found that for men and women, high and low earners, incomes including and excluding pensions, public sector employees do much better than private sector. The median employee in the public sector gets nearly 30 per cent more than his or her counterpart in the private sector, once we take account of the employer's pension contribution. The ONS report massively undermines union rhetoric which promises mass opposition – and even “civil disobedience” – against spending reductions and a public sector pay and pensions squeeze.

The TPA have called for successive Governments to get a grip on the situation, and our Public Sector Rich List and Town Hall Rich List series have been very influential in highlighting the extent to which public sector executives are excessively rewarded. The Chancellor has promised a two-year public sector pay freeze and it is vital that this is stuck to rigidly with no clever tricks being used to circumvent it. The previously untouchable public sector pensions are also in urgent need of reform; we await the initial findings of John Hutton’s inquiry to see if it is a challenge that the Government is ready to face.

Spending cuts debate

Last week our Director, Matthew Sinclair, took part in a televised BBC London debate about spending cuts in the capital, intervening twice. On the programme, aired last Thursday, he countered Ken Livingstone's assertion that cuts were based on a lie, that we don't have an actual issue with the debt. Livingstone argued that we had a higher debt after the Second World War, but Matthew pointed out to him that after a war you traditionally stop fighting and cut spending massively as you don't have to buy Spitfires, artillery shells and all the other things needed to beat the Nazis.

Secondly, he interjected to respond to all those claiming that London was somehow special and shouldn't be subject to cuts. Matthew argued that every region can construct some reason why it deserves special treatment but everyone needs to do their bit or the nation will be heading for bankruptcy. What we need to do is be a bit more imaginative, and think of ways we can help those regions without spending more money. He said that what London needs is for government to get out of the way, scrap European regulations, green policies and other restrictions that are preventing the private sector growing.

Now, not many TPA supporters would argue with that! If you'd like to watch the full programme it's still available online so do click here.

Lord Forsyth delivers the closing speech of ERB 2010

As we mentioned in our bulletin last week, the European Resource Bank conference was the fantastic event we hoped it would be. David Stanley, Chairman of the World Taxpayers Associations, and Barbara Kolm, Director of the Hayek Institute, opened proceedings for us and a video of David’s speech is available here, and Barbara’s here if you'd like to see what they had to say.

To close the conference, the TPA hosted a dinner which was a great success and we were honoured to have the Rt Hon Lord Forsyth deliver the closing speech, the full text of which can be found on our website. We do urge you to take a look!

Now you won't have to PAYE interest!

For the second time in less than a week HMRC has had to u-turn on the handling of the PAYE debacle. After being hauled before the Treasury Select Committee, Dave Hartnett, the top taxman at HMRC, now says millions of people who underpaid tax as a result of his department’s mistake will not have to pay interest on the money they owe. He’d initially said they’d have to pay as much as three per cent.

This change of heart comes after an embarrassing back down for the beleaguered HMRC boss on Saturday, when the BBC released an interview where Hartnett said he would not apologise for PAYE mistakes. Our Campaigns Manager, Emma Boon, was interviewed by BBC Breakfast and ITV news and condemned Hartnett for his failure to say sorry. By that evening Dave Hartnett had issued an apologetic statement, admitting that he had been insensitive.

The story of 6 million taxpayers charged the wrong amount of income tax is unlikely to go away any time soon, and whilst it rumbles on in the news we do urge you to beware of the fraudulent emails being sent out asking you to enter personal details, including bank account numbers. One of our staff members received one of these (very convincing!) messages just this week, so please do remember that HMRC won't ever contact you electronically and even if the email has the official logo at the head and a recognisable address we assure you it's a fake - and all correspondence will be sent in the post.

And don't forget if you do receive a genuine letter in the wake of the PAYE fiasco and would be happy to speak to a journalist, please do get in touch with us!

And finally...

Our friends at the Adam Smith Institute are producing some excellent Adam Smith desk and pocket diaries with Letts (pictured). These diaries are crafted in Scotland from the highest quality materials, with gold blocking on the red leather covers, giving them a luxurious finish. They have extensive business and information pages, and a page about the great economist himself. You can have the diary personalised with your own name or initials in gold on the cover alongside Smith's profile and signature.

They'd make a lovely gift for any admirer of Adam Smith and his ideas, or a nice personal item for those of you who are already planning the year ahead! If you'd like to take a closer look or purchase one of these diaries then you can do so by clicking here.

Best of the blogs

Burning Our Money: Non-job of the week - This weeks winner fought off competition from a 'Physical Activity Development Officer' and a 'Greener Borough Officer'... Who'd have guessed local government were strapped for cash?!

Better Government: Walking in a union fantasyland - Will the proposed cuts make Britain a "dark, brutish and more frightening place"? Jennifer Dunn invites us to take a deep breath and ignore union scaremongering.

Grassroots: Are we being gagged? - Grassroots activist, John Martin, wants councils to pay a little more heed to the views and concerns of the electorate...

Economics 101: Employment depends on the Government getting out of the way of the private sector - Matthew Sinclair points out what we need to do in order to continue outpacing the eurozone in terms of employment growth, and that means addressing two big TPA gripes - regulation and welfare.

Campaign: There is no excuse for council tax rises - Westminster Councillor, JP Floru, makes the argument we'd like to hear all of our elected politicians making.

Better Government: Cutting red tape could save council millions - Abolish Sunday trading laws? Axe annual parking reports? John O'Connell discusses the merits of chopping away costly regulation.

Burning Our Money: An expensive service for the few - Ever tuned in to 'Traffic Radio' - run by the Highways Agency and Transport for London - while you're driving? Well it's pretty unlikely because, unbelievably, it's only available on digital radio and online! Read about the service you're paying for that's available in fewer than 1% of vehicles.