Our report provides evidence of the need for spending cuts, puts the cuts into the context of the longer term pattern for each department, and looks at the overall fiscal crunch facing families throughout the country. Do click here to watch the videos of our speakers, including our Director, Matthew Sinclair, and please share the briefing and the videos with any friends or family who might be interested. This week the Chancellor finally took to the despatch box to outline spending reductions for the next five years. It was a day many people had been counting down to, not least the team here at the TPA. Politicians have often been vague about how they are going to deal with the fiscal crisis. We stepped in to set out clear proposals for how to cut spending and get the public finances in order. First, by releasing How to Save £50 Billion with the Institute of Directors in September 2009, and then by publishing our popular book How to Cut Public Spending in March this year. Among the savings we proposed were measures like cutting the pay of the top earners in the public sector, and scrapping lots of unaccountable and bloated quangos (the sort that would only be missed by the staff that worked for them and a few other special interests). Finally yesterday we were given some detail about how the Government are attempting to close the deficit. There were many tangible, important and sensible cuts announced that will hopefully mean lower taxes and less cash wasted on debt interest over time. Wasteful programmes, including 'Train to Gain', are going and there are healthy cuts in departments like the Treasury, BIS and DEFRA. There were also cuts to the enormous benefits bill. Unfortunately a number of measures which could have saved significant amounts of money without hitting the priorities of ordinary families haven't been implemented: a freeze in the International Development budget, which could have saved £3.7 billion a year by 2014-15; pay cuts for the best paid public sector staff; and scrapping quangos like the Carbon Trust and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Though sensible and necessary cuts were announced on Wednesday, the Government need to do more to ease the burden on families and encourage a strong economic recovery. We've been giving our reaction to the media and, in a first for the TPA, on Wednesday Emma Boon appeared on the Alan Titchmarsh Show arguing the case for cuts - to watch the show, click here - while Matthew Sinclair appeared on BBC Radio Five Live to discuss the impact of welfare cuts on the poor, which you can Many of you will have seen our mid-week release on the Real National Debt, which now stands at nearly £8 trillion. Click here to read the report and watch our video of TPA Research Fellow Mike Denham putting the huge numbers into context. We used over 8,000 pennies to show the scale of the debt, with each one representing £1,000,000,000 – the video shows just how much debt the Government keep off the balance sheet. Last week we heard how a body set up by Yorkshire Forward, a Regional Development Agency, was using taxpayers' money to actively compete against a private business. Our Deputy Research Director John O'Connell has more on this here. If you know of any publically funded bodies that are squeezing out local businesses, then get in touch. Also, do write to your local MP and Councillors using this website to voice your concerns. Jesse Norman, MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire, has started a new campaign to get a rebate from PFI providers doing the rounds, and the potential returns could be massive. PFI projects are worth £210 billion in assets and many were agreed in incredibly generous deals in a stitch-up to keep the cost of major projects off the public sector balance sheet, so the rebates could be very valuable. You might want to write to your MP and encourage them to support Jesse Norman's campaign for a rebate, as most constituencies in the country will have a PFI capital project ongoing or recently completed. Write to your MP here. Campaign: Curbing the use of consultants - Emma Boon reflects on the National Audit Office report on the Government's use of consultants Better Government: Interference in council affairs scaled back - Chris Daniel celebrates the end of Local Area Agreements Grassroots: Stop Scaremongering - Tim Newark warns Bath of the dangers of the congestion charge Campaign: How the UK and the EU are Subsidising the French Music Industry - Dominique Lazanski with another another example of the gross misuse of funds and taxes that the EU receives from its member states Economics 101: Funding of free TV licenses to transfer to the BBC? - Chris Daniel nticipates a long tussle between the BBC and the Government...
TaxPayers' Alliance Bulletin - 22nd October 2010
TPA Media Briefing
On Thursday morning we presented a new report on the previous day's Spending Review at a media briefing in our London office. TPA research staff crunched the numbers late into Wednesday night so that we were straight out of the blocks with our findings.
Spending Review 2010
In some areas the Government has introduced big new, wasteful spending commitments. Carbon Capture and Storage and the Green Investment Bank get £1 billion each, for example. That's a lot of money to find from other programmes or the pockets of ordinary families. Also, a new green tax will put pressure on businesses as they recover from the recession.Real Debt
Public sector bodies actively squeezing out private
business
PFI Rebate
Best of the Blogs
www.taxpayersalliance.com
Friday, 22 October 2010
Posts
