TaxPayers' Alliance Bulletin - 3rd December 2010
New research on taxpayer funded environmentalism
We released our report and new video on taxpayer funded environmentalism this week, as politicians met at the Cancun Climate summit. Our research highlights the millions of pounds of taxpayers' money given to environmental campaigning organisations by the Government, the EU, quangos and local councils across the UK. The facts are startling:
- A total of £10.1 million was given to a range of environmental groups by the UK Government and the European Union in 2009-10.
- The total includes £2.5 million from various UK local councils, departments and quangos.
- It also includes £7.6 million in European Commission grants to environmental NGOs, including a total of £825,888 in 2009-10 to the European Environmental Bureau.
- The Foreign and Commonwealth Office made the largest UK payment in 2009-10 of £342,929 to WWF UK.
- Hackney council made the largest payment in 2009-10 from a UK council at £141,246 to Global Action Plan.
- Big Lottery Fund made the largest payment from a UK quango at £73,994, again to Global Action Plan.
Matthew Sinclair, Director of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said:
"Environmentalist campaigns are politicised groups so it's unfair and undemocratic that they are getting taxpayers' money. If people want to give their own cash that's one thing, but with ordinary families facing higher taxes the last thing they want is for politicians and bureaucrats to give on their behalf or put contracts to such groups. Taxpayers pay twice, once for the money given to green groups and then again when they campaign for regulations that push up electricity bills and other costs. The expensive scandal of taxpayer funded environmentalism in Britain and the EU has to end."
Is your council funding environmentalism campaigns? Click here to read our report
Please also share our video on this report with your friends on Facebook, Twitter and through e-mail and You Tube. The short video explains what taxpayer funded environmentalism is and features a number of the organisations involved and the grants they receive.
MPs' expenses
At the TPA, we are fervently committed to openness and transparency in government. Unfortunately one area that has been abused and has been less than transparent in the past is MPs' expenses. The new body for regulating MPs' expenses (the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, or ipsa) published the first round of MPs' expenses under the new system earlier this week. 22,000 claims made by 576 MPs went online at the ipsa website with the first round of publication covering claims made and reimbursed between 7 May and 31 August 2010.
We have been carefully combing through the claims to see how MPs have been spending our money, and to check they haven't tried to slip in anything that's inappropriate or outside the rules. Whilst we have found no evidence of duck ponds, moat cleaning or expensive rugs, there is still a continuing debate about where to draw the line on expenses. For instance, Gordon Brown spent £2,532 on travel between July and September but was only seen in the House of Commons once in that period.
Here's how you can help: We are asking all TPA supporters to go online and check up on what MPs have claimed. You can access your MPs expenses by going to the Ipsa website. There you can select your MP, the category of their expenses and see the detailed cost.
For each claim, ipsa will publish proactively the MP's name, constituency, the budget the claim is made from (such as General Administrative Expenditure), and the type of expense (such as travel) and a description of the claim. For travel claims, ipsa will publish the start point and destination for each journey and the class of travel.
However ipsa will not be publishing receipts automatically, just details of the claims. They say this is because the cost of preparing tens of thousands of receipts for publication would be more than £1 million a year and would not provide value for taxpayers' money. If there is an item on your MPs' expenses that you would like to take issue with then please write to: ipsa, 7th floor, Portland House, Bressenden Place, London SW1E 5BH and request to be able to see the receipt. Alternatively click here to e-mail ipsa.
OBR announcement 
Vindication this week for planned spending cuts as the Office for Budget Responsibility revealed the UK economy recovered more strongly since the spring than was initially expected. A year ago the economy was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and many feared we would be the ones requiring a bail-out, the worst for the economy now appears to be behind us. The austerity measures seem to have done the trick. While undeniably there will be tough times ahead, the emergency budget measures seem to have steered the economy in the right direction, and many of the policies were originally proposed by the TPA.
GDP estimate this year has been revised up from 1.2 per cent to 1.8 per cent. In a double dose of good news for the Chancellor, the OBR also revised down estimated public sector job losses from 490,000 to 330,000. The OBR admits that the future remains uncertain and will depend greatly on waiting for the measures in the Comprehensive Spending Review to officially kick in. Until then, we can be certain that spending cuts came just in time, the economy seems to have emerged from the worst and people are no longer muttering the possibility of a dreaded double-dip recession. For further analysis of this see Mike Denham's blog here.
Fair pay in the public sector
Also hitting the headlines again this week was public sector pay. We've long stood up for taxpayers by criticising excessively high pay in the public sector and we've been watching with interest to see what will come out of the ongoing Fair Pay Review.
An interim report by the review, headed by Will Hutton of the Work Foundation, this week revealed that said executive pay had been rising faster than medium and low earners, creating greater pay "dispersion" over the past decade. The report recommends that top executives should not be paid more than 20 times the wages of other staff.
The review found there were around 20,000 public sector employees earning over £117,000, while average salaries for executives were £200,000 for heads of universities, £150,000 for NHS hospital trust chief executives, £117,000 for local authority chiefs, £170,000 for four star generals in the armed forces and £160,000 for permanent secretaries in Government departments.
Mr Hutton admitted:
"There are significant upward pressures on senior pay and, before the pay freeze, some increasingly eye-catching settlements...Moreover the range of top pay deals across the public sector has little coherence or relationship to the public's priorities in generating genuine public value. Without clear principles there is every prospect of the rise and potentially irrational range in senior pay settlements continuing - which will accentuate already growing concerns about pay fairness."
Mike Denham blogged on this earlier in the week, if you missed it find it here or in Best of the Blogs at the end of this bulletin.
Tax competition 
Having governments compete to offer taxpayers a good deal is one of the things that keeps down the burden of taxation by curbing the temptation to rip us off. With a competitive tax system the UK has a more competitive economy too. But the EU (along with the OECD and IMF) promotes policies that seek to restrict tax competition.
This week or friends over at the Instituto Bruno Leoni in Italy released a paper that outlines the case for tax competition. If you have time to take a read it's well worth a look, click here for the report. TPA Director Matthew Sinclair was quoted commenting on the report in the Italian newspaper Il Foglio.
Keeping down the cost of Christmas
Many taxpayers are feeling the pinch this year. So it was surprising to hear that lots of councils are splashing out hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money on getting Z-list celebrities to come and switch on their Christmas lights. Of course we all want to enjoy the festive season, but with huge pressures on public finances local councils should be behaving sensibly and not splashing huge sums on 5 minute appearances by these supposed 'stars'. Local shops and business contribute to the cost in some areas, but in others taxpayers are footing the full bill. TPA Campaign Director Emma Boon appeared in the top story on The One Show on BBC One on Tuesday to urge councils to keep the cost of Christmas down. If you missed it you can watch it again on the BBC iPlayer.
Best of the Blogs
Burning our Money: Hutton On Public Sector Fat Cats - Mike Denham has been reading Will Hutton's interim report on public sector pay, and he isn't impressed (despite the fact we get a name check)
Better Government: Why we need free schools, summed up in a sentence - "People may complain about spelling and grammar but these days we sit at a computer which works out much of that for you. Are those skills really as important as they used to be?" Why we need free schools
Economics 101: More to be done to stop firms moving overseas - TPA Research Director John O'Connell welcomed yesterday's announcements on Controlled Foreign Companies Tax but thinks more can be done to keep businesses in the UK
Campaign: Creating jobs is as easy as lowering VAT - Josh Mead on how cutting VAT could help to create jobs
Grassroots: The incinerator saga rumbles on - TPA supporter John Martin on why the taxpayers in Norfolk are soon to feel the heat, one way or another
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