2012 was supposed to be the year when everything would start to look up for the Government, according to the received wisdom back in May 2010. This was to be the year when the economy would rebound into strong growth, monarchists would celebrate Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee and the gaiety of the nation would be lifted upwards as Londoners in traffic jams wished Olympics VIPs Godspeed as they whizzed past in exclusive Olympics traffic lanes. But that’s not how it looks now. Continue Reading

The Economist writes about a long term challenge for the Chancellor of the Exchequer as people drink less and smoke less, reducing the revenue from duties on cigarettes and booze.  More efficient cars could have the same effect.  A Citigroup study has pointed out that the lower fueling costs of electric cars, which partly make up for the currently high initial costs, are the result of taxation on electricity being lower than taxes on petrol or diesel.  So if we all start driving them what will politicians do with a Fuel Duty shaped hole in their budgets? Continue Reading

A new year dawns, but unfortunately the same old non-jobs remain. Thanks to an eagle-eyed supporter, I’ve discovered that ‘a central government client’ is searching for an Interim Diversity Professional. The daily rate for this non-job is a whopping £375-£400. That’s an annualised salary of around £100K for making sure the government doesn’t discriminate against its employees, even though it’s illegal to do so. It seems as if the war on non-jobs in Whitehall is proving ineffectual when you read job adverts like this one.

Newham Borough council is looking for a Hearty Lives Project Manager. The purpose of this job is to ‘increase children and young peoples [sic] physical activity levels and promote heart health activity to prevent ill health.’ Continue Reading

The British Council is the UK’s international cultural relations body sponsored by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. As part of our campaign for better transparency and accountability in Quango spending the TaxPayers’ Alliance can reveal the full credit card spending of the British Council for the last two years.

Click here for the full breakdown of spending
(9MB Excel file)

Click here for the complete press release

The key findings are:

• In the last two financial years the British Council has spent a total of £6.7 million on its credit cards
• Between 2009-10 and 2010-11 the British Council spent nearly £2 million on hotel bills.
• Staff and guests of the British Council enjoyed stays at 5 star hotels such as the Renaissance Hotel in Hong Kong, the Caesar Park in Rio De Janeiro and the Park Hyatt in Dubai.
• During the same period the Council spent £1,085,206 on flights and £407,496 on restaurants bills.
• The British council’s expenditure on hotels increased by £437,424 while spending on flights rose by £183,567 and restaurants by £152,402 between 2009-10 and 2010-11.
• Over £30,000 was spent at the Imperial Hotel in New Delhi, which is described as “best luxury hotel in India”.
• In the hotel’s restaurant the Spice Route, two credit card bills cost £1,376. The restaurant is famous for “having one of the most outstanding restaurant wine lists in the world”
• Last year the British council purchased flights worth £32,845 in Belgium alone. The British Council was recently criticised for spending money on a campaign promoting EU foreign policy and culture which it ran from its Brussels office.
• Other spending included £4,844 on the London Eye, £1,056 on a Spa-Salon in Russia, £142 on a haircut and £80 on the Yellow Duckmarine (duck tours on the Thames). The credit card was also used for items such as cinema trips, iTunes purchases and at the Body Shop.

Matthew Sinclair, Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:

“Taxpayers will be worried that they are being asked to support British Council bureaucrats living the high life abroad while they have to tighten their belts at home. Of course the organisation’s job is to promote Britain abroad which means it will incur travel and accommodation costs but staff need to keep these to a minimum. They need to explain many of the items bought with their credit cards which look extravagant, like the huge amounts spent at upmarket hotels. The British Council’s New Year’s resolution should be to cut these bills and be more transparent about how they spend taxpayers’ cash.”

Click here for the full breakdown of spending
(9MB Excel file)

Click here for the complete press release

The British Council is the UK’s international cultural relations body sponsored by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. As part of our campaign for better transparency and accountability in Quango spending the TaxPayers’ Alliance can reveal the full credit card spending of the British Council for the last two years.

Click here to read the report

A month ago we commented on Sheffield City Council’s decision to send out  over 230,000 leaflets to residents asking them for ideas on how to save money. The consultation period has now ended, and the BBC is reporting that only 1900 leaflets (0.8%) have been returned. As it cost £21,000 to print these leaflets, this works out at £11 per response. What we don’t know is if there were any additional costs, such as postage, which will have pushed the costs much higher.  Continue Reading

The Government today gave the the go-ahead for the £32 billion HS2 high speed London to Birmingham rail project.

We have been one of the most active critics of the proposals, following detailed research into the plans. 

Key findings are:

• HS2 will be enormously expensive, costing well over £1,000 per family, but only a fortunate minority will benefit
• This is a railway for the rich but paid for by everyone. HS2 assumes average passenger income of £70,000 and relies on a 27 per cent over inflation rise in fares (source: High speed rail)
• Under those plans, cities like Coventry and Stoke on Trent will see a worse service and there will be a number of other capacity problems (source: HS2 capacity analysis)
• Ministers have pledged to address some of those problems, but their pledges and other schemes needed to make HS2 work as advertised could see the cost to taxpayers rise from £17.1 billion to £45.5 billion (source: The hidden costs of HS2) We have challenged the Government to set out the true cost of the scheme or be more honest about some of the consequences of HS2
• The public are not in favour of HS2.  A YouGov poll on spending cuts that we commissioned found 48 per cent of respondents supported cancelling the project with only 34 per cent opposed to such a move (source: Spending poll 2011)
• Business leaders are also sceptical. We organised an open letter from business leaders and economic commentators including Simon Wolfson and Nigel Lawson attacking the scheme as a “vanity project” and a “white elephant” (source: Letter)
• 38 per cent of members of the Institute of Directors believe that the public spending required to build the new line would represent poor value for money, compared with only 30 per cent who think it would represent good value (Source: IoD member survey)
• Other campaign groups including the Countryside Alliance, the RAC Foundation and the Green Party are also sceptical. We organised a briefing where they made the case against the new line (watch: Briefing video)

To reflect all of these concerns, we have released a series of videos asking: “Why is the Government taxing the poor to pay for a rich man’s train?”

Responding to today’s announcement Matthew Sinclair, Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:

“It is extremely disappointing that the Government is pressing ahead with plans for a new high speed rail line that will cost taxpayers a fortune. The economic case for the new line just isn’t credible and ministers still aren’t being honest about the hidden costs, or the consequences for towns getting a worse service and passengers paying higher fares under their current plans. There has never been a proper consideration of strategic alternatives that could deliver greater capacity more quickly and without the enormous bill. This white elephant will mean a faster journey for a fortunate few but at an enormous cost to the rest of us; it should be abandoned before too much money has been wasted.”

Useful links to our previous work on HS2

High Speed Rail
Will HS2 create jobs?
HS2 capacity analysis
The hidden costs of HS2
TPA/YouGov spending poll 2011

Our videos questioning the case for HS2

Why are the Government taxing the poor to pay for a rich man’s train?
Why are the Government taxing ordinary motorists to pay for a rich man’s train?
Why are the Government cutting services for ordinary commuters to make way for a rich man’s train?

Finally, click here to see our submission to the Transport Select Committee.

Torbay TPA supporter Dave Grylls draws my attention to his council’s inadequate provision of parking in and around Torbay Hospital in Devon, which they have made worse by introducing controlled parking zones (CPZs) in nearby streets. ‘As there are limited spaces in the Hospital itself,’ says Dave, ‘this greatly affects hospital workers, who park on these roads throughout the working week.  These roads have never been subject to parking charges before. I seem to recall that to create or increase parking charges locally, to supplement government cuts would not be tolerated.’

The parking problems around Torbay Hospital have some history with one woman being fined for failing to find an adequate parking place while attending an appointment for her son with severe heart problems. ‘I know it’s wrong,’ she said. ‘But people have to drive around for half an hour to find a car parking space at the hospital when they have important medical appointments to keep.’ Continue Reading

The campaign to end taxpayer funding of trade unions, building on pioneering TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) research, is gathering momentum as it is again raised in a major House of Commons debate. After PMQs today Jesse Norman MP (Hereford and South Herefordshire) is bringing a motion for a Bill to end the practice.

In 2010 the TPA undertook one of the most extensive Freedom of Information campaigns ever to establish the value of the direct grants and paid staff time that trade unions receive. The TPA’s most recent, updated research estimated that trade unions received a total of £113 million of funding from taxpayers in 2010-11 (£80 million in paid staff time and £33 million in direct payments).

Click here to read the most recent report on taxpayer funding of trade unions

At least 2,840 full time equivalent public sector staff worked on trade union activities or duties at taxpayers’ expense in 2010-11. There are now more taxpayer funded trade unionists in the UK than British Transport Police officers (2,835)

Matthew Sinclair, Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:

“It is great to see Jesse Norman moving to end this scandalous subsidy for unions that are disrupting services in a vain attempt to stop necessary restraint in public spending. Taxpayers shouldn’t have to fund staff to work for trade unions, providing them with a huge activist base to support strikes and freeing up resources for political campaigns. Paying for the salaries of full-time union staff and the many grants the unions receive is yet another burden on hard pressed families, diverting money they expect to be spent on frontline services. MPs should vote to end that subsidy today.”

There is no respite from waste for the residents of Stoke-on-Trent.

Not content with spending £330,000 firing and re-hiring the same workers, nor satisfied with paying over half a million pounds to employees suspended from work, the City Council now plans to hire an assistant Chief Executive on a salary of £132,000 and a new assistant director on £104,000.

John van de Laarschot, whose own annual package as Chief Executive is £198,000, has managed without a deputy since he took over in 2009. Continue Reading

Last year’s Census was estimated to have cost around £500 million. The costs are still mounting up though. Advertising in the Guardian, a government agency is looking for a PR manager on a temporary three month contract. The pay is £180-£220 per day, and the job is ‘developing and implementing comprehensive PR Campaigns around 2011 Census and associated activity’. I suppose the government wants to attempt to justify spending such a large amount of money on the Census, and by recruiting the services of someone in PR to publicise how ‘useful’ the exercise was, is its idea of doing it. Continue Reading

Back in 2008 when the MPs’ expenses scandal was unravelling, we discovered that many MPs regarded their expenses as an additional source of income. They felt they were underpaid and, as a result, abused the lax regime in charge of administering their expenses to rake in extra cash. This was clearly illegal, as former members have discovered to their cost. Parliament, and politicians in general, still have a long way to go to recover the public’s trust in them.

This morning I received a press release from a Conservative borough councillor in Rugby attacking Conservative-run Warwickshire County Council. Cllr Howard Roberts states that a massive 87% of county councillors receive a special responsibility allowance (SRA). These allowances are  supposed to be paid to members who have to give up a significant amount of extra time to perform their duties, such as cabinet members and chairs of important committees such as planning. The SRA is paid on top of the basic allowance all councillors receive, which in Warwickshire is currently £8975.04 per annum. Continue Reading