This week we released a groundbreaking report on the burden of green taxes. Against a backdrop of tough economic times and a Copenhagen summit that has been mired in controversy, the TPA revealed just how much Britain is overpaying for its carbon emissions. Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have been a priority for governments of both parties for a number of years. The direction of policy over the last 18 years has been fairly consistent: increasingly ambitious targets to cut emissions, an increasingly high price on emission through taxes or regulations and support for renewable energy. In recent years, Britain has adopted extremely stringent policies along these lines. Unfortunately, these policies are imposing a huge, excessive burden on ordinary families and firms. That burden is falling particularly on those with low to middle incomes, as they spend the most as a share of their income on goods like electricity whose price is pushed up by green taxes and regulations. The report revealed, amongst other things, that green taxes have risen to £26.4 billion in the last year, which is up £1.7 billion from £24.7 billion in 2007/08. The total cost of Britain’s emissions was £4.6 billion in 2008/09 under the IPCC estimate of social cost, which means that green taxes were excessive by £21.8 billion in 2008/09. Read the full report here. Building on this, we today released a detailed estimate of exactly how much Gordon Brown's pledges on cutting carbon emissions by 42 per cent would cost the economy, and therefore ordinary taxpayers. It finds that such a target could require massive economic sacrifices of 30 per cent of Britain’s GDP in 2020, which would represent an unprecedented recession with devastating consequences. Read the research note here. TPA Research Director Matthew Sinclair wrote an article describing this pledge as part of Gordon Brown's scorched earth strategy in Copenhagen, read it here. Denham said that the proposals are a first step towards making council wage bills fairer and more acceptable to local taxpayers. He continued: “The taxpayer – the real pay boss – has a legitimate right to see this information and decide whether or not it is fair.” We've been arguing this for years, and can only hope that at last our politicians plan to match their fine words with fine actions and bring an end to the era of grossly inflated and unaccountable public sector pay. 
Friday, 18 December 2009
TaxPayers' Alliance bulletin - 18th December 2009
More good signs on Public Sector Pay
Quangocrats beware ...
Regular readers will be familiar with our extensive work on the size, scope and unchecked growth of the undemocratic quango state. So far, our work has been focused on how much these bodies cost taxpayers, what function they perform, and how their functions could often be consolidated or, in some cases, given over entirely to the third or voluntary sector. Building on this work, we have this week taken a look at some of the individuals who oversee quangos on our behalf; the non-executive board members and quango Chairs. This research will be reported in this week's Sunday Telegraph, so take a look and see how the quango class do business.
Best of the blogs:
Better Government: RPA officially on the naughty step
Better Government: Where does your money go?
Better Government: Let no one say the Government’s budgetary policies are anything other than incoherent
Better Government: The MOD and project overruns
Economics 101: Business investment
European Union: The Lisbon Treaty – as Amended Again
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