Britannia Radio

Liam Fox argues Britain needs a different relationship with the EU On Monday we hosted a landmark speech by Dr Liam Fox MP about the UK’s relationship with the European Union. It was his first keynote speech since leaving the Cabinet and we were delighted to have him use our platform to argue that Britain’s national interest is not served by its current relationship with the EU and that the Government needs to negotiate a new relationship “based on economic rather than political considerations”. The speech was streamed live to the nation on the 24-hour news channels and reported widely by the national and even international press (for example, you can see Channel 4’s report here). Click the image above to watch the speech in full or the image below for some of the BBC’s coverage. What are the consequences of the Libor scandal for taxpayers? Many people have been outraged by the behaviour of the bank staff who were part of the Libor rate-fixing scandal. Last weekend, Treasury Select Committee member Andrea Leadsom MP urged the Bank of England to investigate the potential effects of the manipulation of the Libor rate on the taxpayer bank bailouts and we supported that call. We have also argued that the National Audit Office should look into the issue as part of its work on how taxpayers’ money was used to support the banking sector during the financial crisis. Did manipulation of the Libor rate lead, directly or indirectly, to more of your money being put at risk investing in bust banks like RBS and Lloyds? TPA Director Matthew Sinclair spoke to ITV Daybreak and Al Jazeera English about the scandal. Progress for StopFundingArgentina.org We may be starting to see progress in our campaign to stop British taxpayers’ money supporting World Bank loans to Argentina. The petition atStopFundingArgentina.org urges the Government to vote against loans to that country given their attacks on British interests and the right of Falklanders to remain British. It now has the most signatures of any official petition to the Department for International Development. This week David Ruffley MP raised the issue in Parliament and had a very interesting response. Alan Duncan MP, a Minister at the Department, told him that a loan was discussed on 21 June, and "the UK representative at the Inter-American Development did not support this loan." It is hard to know exactly what this means, but it sounds like the Government might be moving towards the position of opposing all loans to Argentina that we have been urging. Your help has been critical to the campaign achieving this vital first step. Please help us finish the job by signing the petition atStopFundingArgentina.org and forwarding it to your friends if you haven’t done so already. Pinhead of the Month resigns Just days after being announced as the Pinhead of the Month for June, David Parsons has resigned as the Conservative leader of Leicestershire County Council.  He had been found by the authority’s standards committee to have breached five conditions of the councillors’ code of conduct. The censure related to how he kept hold of taxpayers’ money paid to him for trips to Europe which should have been reimbursed to the council. It then emerged that over the last six years Cllr Parsons used the council’s chauffeur-driven car to take him on no fewer than 202 official trips to London, at a cost of £280 per journey. The same trips would have cost around half as much if he had travelled by train, meaning that his fondness for the official car cost Leicestershire taxpayers somewhere in the region of £25,000. Good riddance. Best of the blogs Good news and bad news in local government. Chris Daniel wrote about how Harrow Council is expecting to save £800,000 with new housing repair contracts that increase competition. On the other hand, Tim Newark looked atSomerset County Council hiring consultants on £1,000 a day, expressing serious doubts over whether they would prove good value for money. And Andrew Allison wrote about the Transformation Programme Manager at Copeland Borough Council, the latest non-job of the week. Declan Pang wrote about big bonuses at Network Rail, which have been attacked by Shadow Transport Secretary, Maria Eagle, who says they should be “for exceptional performance, not the rule.” Henry Wilson reported on new figures from the Cabinet Office on the number of Civil Servants who are working for the trade unions instead of delivering public services. While the official survey is a lot less comprehensive than the one we have previously produced, it still shows 248 employees who spend allof their time on trade union duties as well as thousands more working on them part time.