The Evening Standard’s Craig Woodhouse blogged last week that Early Day Motions are being threatened with abolition in the House of Commons, in advance of an adjournment debate tonight on the subject of “reforming EDMs”.

Early Day Motions are often referred to by their critics as “parliamentary graffiti”, since several thousand of these motions are tabled by MPs every year in Parliament but are never debated: they are merely printed alongside other Commons business papers the day after they are tabled, and reprinted on future days whenever they attract new signatories.

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Following his resignation from Cabinet last week, former Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne is now entitled to a ministerial severance package worth £17,207, equivalent to 3 months of his taxpayer-funded £68,827 salary. Such entitlements are least deserved when criminal allegations are charged against Secretaries of State. A spokesmen for the party said Mr Huhne still had yet to decide whether to take the package. The TaxPayers’ Alliance is not the only voice urging him not to.
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PFI has been associated with some of the worst excesses of Gordon Brown’s irresponsibility with the public finances.  Along with other debts like the bill for decommissioning early nuclear plants it is a part of our total liabilities that was hidden off the balance sheet.  The amount at stake is substantial, tens of billions of pounds, though tiny compared to the biggest hidden liability: public sector pensions.

The release of the Whole of Government Accounts has led to fresh scrutiny of the PFI programme with the Independent, for example, reporting that there was a liability of “£131.5bn on the private finance initiative (PFI) such as hospital and school building – four times more than the assets secured by the deals”.

It doesn’t sound good.  But does that mean PFI is an inherently bad way of paying for worthwhile investments?  Not necessarily. Continue Reading

The TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) can today reveal the cost of flights by local authorities in Hampshire over the last two years. Our findings show that twelve councils in the county continue to use air travel and spent a total of £135,000 on flights over those two financial years. There are stark differences in the amounts spent by different authorities, with two councils spending no money on flights at all.

To read the full report, including a breakdown by local council, click here

Click here for the complete press release

The key findings of this research are:

• More than £135,000 was spent on flights by councils in Hampshire between April 2009 and November 2011
• Southampton City Council spent the most with a total of £55,687
• Only 2 councils, Hart District and Havant Borough, did not pay for any flights
• East Hampshire District and Fareham Borough Councils spent £342 on flights to attend a Local Government Association conference in Leeds
• Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council spent almost £12,000 on flights to EU conferences paid for by taxpayers through EU budgets
• Hampshire County Council spent £45,000 on flights, including £1,395 to send staff to an Assembly of European Regions Bureau meeting
• Test Valley Borough Council spent £431 to send an employee to Chicago to attend the International Institute of Municipal clerks’ conference
• Eastleigh Borough Council spent over £500 on flights to send staff on Arts and Tourism training
• More than £5,500 was spent on flights for on twinning visits between April 2009 and November 2011. This includes £2,168 by Fareham Borough Council visiting Vannes in France and Pulheim in Germany; £1,696 spent by Gosport Borough Council visiting Royan in France; and £1,457 by Rushmoor Borough Council visiting Oberursel in Germany
• Hampshire County Council spent £101 on a flight to Brussels on a fact-finding visit for a new member of staff to increase their knowledge of EU opportunities to help secure additional grants

To read the full report, including a breakdown by local council, click here

Click here for the complete press release

John Henvest, Hampshire TPA activist, said:

“It is shocking that some council staff have been jetting around at taxpayers’ expense. These local authorities need to find millions in savings in the coming years and with modern technology like video conferencing they needn’t spend large sums of taxpayers’ money on plane tickets. It is great that two authorities in Hampshire were prudent and didn’t spend a penny of taxpayers’ money on flights, however, others need to control the amount being spent on air travel.”

In October 2011 the TaxPayers’ Alliance exposed how much money was spent on flights by councils in the Midlands.

Now, with its first research note, the Hampshire branch of the TaxPayers’ Alliance can reveal the cost to taxpayers of air travel taken by all local authorities in the area from April 2009 to November 2011.

Click here to read the report

Bath resident Malcolm Ward has been keeping a close eye on the expenses of the City Mayor. Since 1996, when Bath City Council was incorporated into Bath & North East Somerset, the Mayor of Bath’s office was maintained for ceremonial reasons by the setting up of the Charter Trustees, which was granted a portion of local taxpayers’ money.

‘At that point in 1996, legislation set the mayoral precept at £60,000,’ said Ward in a letter to the local newspaper. ‘Subsequent inflation would have taken this figure to just under £100,000 in the current financial year. Somehow, in just over 15 years, the Charter Trustees have raised the precept to £209,000.’ Continue Reading

The TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) has today heavily criticised Surrey County Council for voting to hike Council Tax by 2.99 per cent at a time when hard pressed taxpayers are struggling with rising bills. Council Tax is second only to VAT as the most burdensome tax for the poorest households. Most local authorities have chosen to freeze Council Tax while some, like the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, have chosen to help local families by cutting it. Surrey County Council has instead decided to increase the burden on local families.

TaxPayers’ Alliance research and official statistics put this rise in context, and suggest some areas where savings could be made instead:

• Over the past 10 years residents in Surrey County Council have seen their Council Tax bills increase by 72 per cent
• The Chief Executive at Surrey County Council received total remuneration of £253,133 in 2010/2011. There were at least 19 staff who received more than £100,000 at the authority in 2009/10
• Councillors’ allowances at Surrey County Council cost taxpayers £1,582,000 in 2010-11
• Taxpayers paid (via employer contributions) £32,124,000 to the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) at Surrey County Council in 2010-11, an increase of £453,000 from the previous year
• 55 councillors in Surrey have enrolled themselves on the LGPS. Many authorities choose not to allow councillors on to the scheme, recognising the historically volunteer role of local politicians
• The estimated cost of union officials at Surrey Council is £284,743, these are staff paid for by taxpayers but work for the trade unions. This does not include the cost of other support provided such as office space or the administration of union fees
• Surrey Police Authority are increasing the size of their Council Tax precept, further adding to each household’s bill
• The TPA have previously highlighted other areas of wasteful spending by Surrey County Council including articles such as  ‘The cost of mobile phones’ and ‘Surrey County Council get the latest toy’. Surrey has appeared in our regular ‘Non-job of the week’ feature in: February 2011, March 2011 and August 2011

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

“The council have let people in Surrey down by imposing a big hike in council tax on residents, so many of whom already struggle to pay. Over the last ten years there has already been a drastic increase in council tax bills and, with so many other pressures on their finances, this is the last thing families in the county need. Surrey needs to follow the example of other local authorities who have shown it is possible to combine quality services with lower bills, and deliver much better value for money.”

Peterborough City Council has been on the TPA radar of late because of their plan to increase council tax by 2.95% each year for the next five years. Senior Tory councillor David Seaton was awarded our “Pinhead of the Month” gong for January in recognition of his efforts to increase the burden on his local residents.

And as the councillors continue to insist that they have no option but to increase council tax – despite the Government offering funding to allow for a freeze – figures have now come to light showing the true extent to which those funds are being used to subsidise the trade unions. Continue Reading

The reason house prices are so unaffordably high and commercial rents are so crushingly heavy is because development isn’t taxed heavily enough. That’s the logic of the new ‘Community Investment Levy’ (CIL) being imposed  by local councils on people hoping to develop their property. The levy is intended to finance infrastructure required by new development. Merton Council, for example, states what the appropriate charge should be in its draft charging schedule:

the ‘appropriate balance’ is the level of CIL which maximises the amount of development in the area. If the CIL charging rate is above this appropriate level, there will be less development than there could be, because CIL will make too many potential developments unviable. Conversely, if the charging rate is below the appropriate level, development will also be less than it could be, because it will be constrained by insufficient infrastructure.

So, because the proposed levy is not going to be zero, the Council obviously thinks that the extra Income Tax, Corporation Tax, Capital Gains Tax, Business Rates, stamp duties and Council Tax receipts the development would generate is not enough to fund necessary infrastructure. Presumably, the bureaucrats who wrote it think there are potential developments out there which developers do not currently believe to be viable because the levy isn’t yet in place. Continue Reading

Bristol TPA supporters braved sub-zero temperatures for their Action Day on Saturday morning, 11^th February. BBC News covered the event on radio and the web. ‘It’s tough times,’ grassroots organiser Tim Newark told the BBC, ‘and the council is needing to cut its front-line services. I feel at the very least the council boss should share in that.’

Supporters gathered at the famous Nails— symbol of Bristol’s trading past—outside the Exchange in Corn Street in central Bristol. Supporters included members of the Bristol Freedom Society. ‘It’s good for us to be involved in local events,’ said its President, Helen Skinner.

Locals were asked to sign a petition saying they would like to see a cut of £40,000 in the basic pay of the Bristol City Council boss—Chief Executive Jan Ormondroyd —from the current sum of £190,000 to £150,000. This followed-up TPA success in Bath when a similar petition helped put pressure on Bath & NES Council to cut basic pay by 15% to £150,000 for their new Chief Executive. In Bristol, TPA supporters gathered over 150 signatures in just one hour and could easily have gone on to get more.

In the latest of a series of investigations into spending on Government Procurement Cards we have learned that staff at the Office of Fair Trading dined out at a branch of smutty American bar and grill chain Hooters and charged the £80 bill to taxpayers.

At the other end of the spectrum, about £2,400 of dining at exclusive London restaurants Patterson’s and Chez Gerrard also appeared on credit card statements obtained by us through an FOI request. Taxpayers might be shocked to hear that the quango in charge of ensuring we don’t get ripped off spent taxpayers’ money in an inappropriate venue such as Hooters, or at such pricey restaurants.

The consumer watchdog charged taxpayers about £38,000 in total for food and drink in the last two years. Naturally some of this will have been legitimate spending on subsistence for staff who were travelling on business but, as these examples show, some of this spending was questionable or extravagant.

Other items of spending from the last two years that stood out were:

• £90,000 on flights
• £10,000 on stays at five-star hotels, including the Grand Hyatt, Cairo and Sunrise Beach Resort, Vietnam
• £500 at a jeweller in Liverpool
• £440 for a training course at the National Theatre
• £386 at Lutyens, near St Paul’s in London
• £100 on food at the Connaught Hotel in Mayfair

You can view the spending data below, or to download the full dataset, click here

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Last year, a petition with 2200 signatures was presented to Bexley Borough Council demanding salaries be capped at £100,000. Under council rules, any petition that attracts 2000 or more signatures automatically triggers a debate at a full council meeting. Although residents in all parts of the borough wanted this issue debating, the council refused quoting the following standing order:

If any question arises at a meeting of the council as to the appointment, promotion, dismissal, salary, superannuation or conditions of service, or as to the conduct of any person employed by the council, such question shall, unless the council otherwise resolves, be deemed to be a ‘special reason’ for excluding the public for the purpose of Section 100A (4) of the Local Government Act 1972.

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