The Local Government Association – paid for by you and me through local councils’ membership subs – have today launched one of the most ill-advised and inappropriate advertising campaigns since Gerald Ratner (who described his own jewellery firm’s produce as "crap"). Here are two of their deligthful offerings, soon to be adorning a bus stop near you:

 

Apparently stung into this misguided action by our Council Spending Uncovered campaign, the LGA bills this as being intended to "repair [councils'] image problem". As that image is at least in part one of hectoring bodies that spend hundreds of millions of pounds on pointless advertising, this may not be the best way to go about it.

At the core of the campaign is a refusal on the part of councils to recognise that, in doubling council tax in a decade but cutting back or standing still with essential services, they have let people down. The campaign seems to be based on a failure to consider themselves as being at fault, but instead assuming people are too stupid to appreciate that their council are actually doing a great job. As an advertising drive, it is wasteful, offensive and counterproductive.

I took part in a discussion about this campaign last night on BBC Radio 5 Live. Amazingly, the LGA didn’t have a press officer available to give the producer information about the campaign (they had to ring me to ask if I knew more about how many posters were being published), or an official spokesman to go on national radio to promote or even defend it. Instead, the discussion was between me and the very decent Cllr Patrick Karney of Manchester City Council, who seemed quite embarassed at this campaign being prosecuted on his behalf. He rightly pointed out that talk, spin and glossy posters are neither what people want or an effective way to change perceptions of local government. The only way to do that, he said, was action. If only the LGA would listen.

Further to our Chief Executive’s post on CentreRight.com yesterday, giving the TPA’s initial reaction to the Parliamentary Members’ Estimate Committee review of MPs’ expenses, a good 24 hours of robust debate have highlighted in more detail some of the good and not-so-good things about the Committee’s proposals.

It’s worth noting that the report has, of course, been written by a Committee of MPs, leading to possibly a more generous financial settlement than outside observers might have suggested. It also means it’s peppered with gems like "we observe with confidence that many MPs’ spouses…are first class employees" (translation: I had to say this, or my dinner’s in the dog) and "the benefits of the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund are grossly misreported and exaggerated" (translation: hands off our gold-plated deal).

1) Transparency

As Matthew noted yesterday, the MEC’s report is rather light on the transparency side of things. It acknowledges the fact that the public are concerned about the lack of transparency, but it doesn’t go much further than that. Nick Harvey MP, speaking for the MEC, has made clear that the Additional Costs Allowance – widely known as the second home allowance – will be fully transparent from the autumn, with receipts published in full for every MP. This is a good thing, but considering MPs were forced into disclosure by a lengthy legal battle culminating in the High Court, it’s not new.

There is no promise of full transparency, to include travel, office and communications allowance, so there is still plenty of room both for any MP intent on breaking the rules to manoevre out of sight and for the public to remain suspicious of all MPs. Those MPs protesting that they do everything above board but are being tarred with the Conway brush should recognise that full disclosure of all expenses is the best way to properly dispel the suspicion hanging – often unfairly – over the whole House of Commons.

2) Auditing

The report does advise a vastly improved system of audits, accounting, record-keeping and spot-checks, which can only be a good thing. Whilst MPs have taken most of the flak for the dodgy claims that have come to light in recent months, the Commons authorities must be held partially responsible, too. The Fees Office has been extraordinarily lax and permissive in not only letting people bend and even break the spirit of the rules, but not strictly enforcing the rules when they are found to be broken. People found to be in breach of the rules have even been allowed a "grace period" running into years to correct their behaviour. The presence of proper, external auditors would be a welcome breath of cold, fresh air into the system.

There still remain a large number of areas in which Parliamentary expenses either run on a basis completely different to the rest of the economy or even in apparent contravention of the standards and rules that HMRC would demand from private companies and other public sector employers. The review doesn’t go into this compliance issue at all, but it is one that will undoubtedly need ironing out in future. Until it is ironed out it may be difficult for any auditor coming into Parliament – do you highlight every single way in which Parliament differs from the wider norm, potentially ending up in the kind of pitched legal battle Michael Martin fought to keep ACA details secret, or do you audit within the weird Parliamentary culture of rules, half-rules and grey areas, risking being caught up in a scandal or at least having the unedifying experience of being seen to apply one standard to Westminster and another to your corporate clients?

In brief, bringing in external auditors to carry out regular inspections is an improvement, but it only defers the debate over the rules themselves and their questionable implementation. I imagine there are some serious questions in the minds of accountancy firms considering bidding for the contract.

3) What can be claimed?

There are three encouraging and welcome improvements in the report on the topic of what will be claimable on expenses.

One is that from now on MPs shouldn’t be able to claim anything unless they have a receipt (with one suggested exception, which we address in Section 4). This would drag Parliament up to speed with the rest of the human race – not so long ago MPs could claim up to £250 without a receipt, and the limit currently stands at £25. It’s right that this should be abolished – if you can’t prove you spent it, you don’t get the money.

The second is that the ability to buy furnishings and equipment for your second home – the so-called John Lewis List – should be abolished. There is no reason why MPs should be able to spend taxpayers’ money on £750 TVs and stereos, or in the case of recently released claims £10,600 kitchens (Tony Blair), £4,000 of groceries (John Prescott) and Sky TV subscriptions (Gordon Brown).

The third good move is a tightening up of the Communications Allowance, which is essentially a free £10,000 budget for incumbent MPs to propagandise to their constituents. The Committee advises banning CA money being spent on letters during election time, and a ban on party logos, which would make it less of a blot on the political landscape, but it’s still in our view a propaganda budget that shouldn’t really exist at all.

4) Additional Costs Allowance reforms

The report puts forward three options for accommodation costs, which I’ll discuss our concerns about as we go:

Option A – Adding accommodation costs to salary

Essentially, this would replace the £24,006 ACA, which is untaxed and non-pensionable, with a £40,000 pay rise (the figure is higher to take into account the tax which would be payable). The extra money would not be pensionable, requiring the introduction of primary legislation to exempt it.

TPA Comment: The idea of a sizeable salary increase to replace the ACA is simply unacceptable – not only because it would be an offensive increase at a time when everyone else is having to accept low pay rises and tighening economic conditions, but because it has serious implications for transparency. In effect you’d be replacing a £24,000 allowance which should only be claimable if expenses have actually been incurred – and when receipts are presented – with a £40,000, no questions asked lump sum. Even taking into account the fact that tax would knock the figure down to £24,000, replacing an expenses system with a non-transparent lump sum would be a blatant attempt to sidestep any calls for accountability, transparency and openness. Furthermore, it would be an effective reward for the dodgy goings on in the past, sending out the message that if you bend or break the rules, you won’t get hold to account or subjected to stricter rules, the rules will just be abolished and you’ll be given the cash without having to expend the energy on imaginative fiddles.

Option B – Overnight Expenses Allowance + £30 a day subsistence

This would replace the current £24,000 allowance with a two-part allowance. One would be a £140 a night allowance for working away from home, up to the value of £19,600 (equivalent to the 140 days Parliament sits). The second part would be a £30 a day subsistence allowance, intended to cover food, and payable automatically without any receipts being required.

TPA Comment: It’s probably best to look at the two parts of this proposal separately. First, the £140 a night figure seems to have been plucked out of the air – there’s no justification given for the figure. In fact, at £1633 a month you could rent or mortgage some pretty nice places – or stay in some of the capital’s top hotels. A proper investigation should surely give a reason for the figure, based on the market prices in the area MPs are meant to be staying. It is a good sign, though, that MPs will be required to prove they actually stayed away from home in order to claim the allowance. The assumption that the report makes is that MPs stay over in London for four nights a week when they are working in London 4 days a week is probably mistaken, with many going home on Thursday night, so linking the allowance to how long they actually are away from home is a sensible move. That said, the report only says they would need to prove this "at audit", and it’s unclear how they would do so. Perhaps a photograph of them with the day’s paper in their lounge would suffice.

More worrying, though, is the £30 "subsistence allowance". This will for no apparent reason be paid without any requirement for receipts or proof that an expense has been incurred. MPs already enjoy heavily subsidised food in the Palace of Westminster, with the Refreshments Department currently running at a £4.8m annual subsidy. Is it really necessary for taxpayers to pay for the rest of the bill, too? Even if we want to pay for MPs’ food as well as everything else, it should be on a receipt-recquired basis. There’s not much point abolishing the right to buy a £750 TV if you just proceed to give MPs £30 a day to spend as they wish, with no transparency. The allowance would amount to £4200 annually per MP (£2.7 million altogether), no questions asked, which would undermine the good steps forward elswhere.

Option C: Daily Attendance Allowances of £140 plus £30 subsistence

TPA Comment: This system has been tried and heartily abused in the European Parliament, with Members signing in for their allowance then heading off elsewhere, secure in the knowledge the key part of their work – cashing in – is done. It also lacks any requirement for the proof of that money actually being necessary to get accommodation, again only requiring an undefined "proof" that they had worked away from home. Certainly the Brussels system of signing in at Parliament has proved as leaky as a sieve. The £30 subsistence allowance again suffers from the problems described in Option B.

The Committee have reccomended Option B as being the best system, but as you’ll have guessed from our comments, we’re not sure this offers the best solution and the best deal for the public. The bottom line for any system has got to be that the money dished out is only what’s necessary to do the actual job – that’s not just our view in the interests of public accountability, it tends to be HMRC’s definition of expenses for the rest of the economy when it comes to tax exemption, so it’s a reasonable standard to demand.

To ensure that, no money should be paid out for anything without receipts, and as the Parliamentary authorities have unfortunately proved to not be up to the task of properly policing the rules, those receipts should be published. The public want to see how their Parliament spends their money, and that’s the best guarantee that our money will be spent carefully.

In summary, this report has some good bits, some awful bits and some glaring omissions. There are no rules proposed, for example, for cohabiting MPs, apparently because the investigation of Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper is still going on. Nor is there that crucial commitment that the public have a right to see everything – not just those bits the High Court has forced into the public domain.

The East Anglian Daily Times has a story today about Suffolk County Council that proves the fiasco surrounding their new Chief Executive’s massive salary was far from being a one-off.

Suffolk CC’s Communications chief left abruptly after the County Council’s Chief Executive’s outrageous new salary hit the national news. The news that his replacement will earn £81,000 also attracted criticism (not least from us). Now it emerges that in the interim, consultants are being paid £500 a day to stand in and run the department.

Shockingly, the council’s defence is

…we are paying less now than we would have paid the previous communications manager.  Even taking account of paying a consultant £20,000, and an honorarium to existing staff for covering the post, it will be less than the £27,000 we would have paid our previous communications manager over this period.

Yes, they think this exorbitant amount is fine, just because it’s cheaper than the even more exorbitant amount than they paid the former holder of the post. And my fish and chips this lunchtime was the healthy option because I had a deep fried Mars bar yesterday.

I think that tells us all we need to know about the pay culture of council management, don’t you?

The National Union of Teachers and Schools Minister Jim Knight have been having a right old barney today about the question of failing schools. Last week the Department for Children, Schools and Families published a list of the 638 schools that fail to educate more than 30% of their pupils to the basic standard of five A* to C GCSEs or higher. The NUT have laid into the list today, pointing out that some of the schools it included have been rated "good" or even "outstanding" by OFSTED. The problem is that there are so many different measures of success, and so many political and vested interests in the debate that we seem to have lost sight of what should be the priority – whether children get a good education.

The NUT don’t seem to be motivated by an urge to help pupils to achieve their best, but rather to defend teachers from ever being criticised, irrespective of their actual performance.

The Government, meanwhile, are a bit caught up in a mess of their own making. One plank of the NUT’s argument is that the measure used to draw up last week’s list may show these schools as failing, but another Government measure – CVA (Contextual Value Added) – shows many of them as being excellent schools.

CVA was introduced by the Government back in 2002 partially to spin the educational statistics into looking better, and partially as a sop to the NUT’s dogmatic insistence that actually all teachers are perfect 100% of the time. CVA takes into account the "wider context" of a school, such as income and ethncity, supposedly to make the assessment fairer. In reality, it’s a gross betrayal of hundreds of thousands of children – a movable goalpost that means it’s officially ok for kids from a poor background to leave school without the same standards of literacy as those who are better off.

Today’s argument has laid bare the CVA farce. Under the adjusted measure schools that are blatantly failing their pupils, sending them out into life without even decent standards of literacy and numeracy in far too many cases, are classed as good or even outstanding. This is a bizarre bit of doublethink – that a school can be good irrespective of the fact that its pupils are not well educated.

By recognising the importance of the actual, real-world performance of schools, the Government are at last acknowledging that how well children are prepared for life is important – something that should never have been forgotten in the first place. The really sad thing is that whilst the Government defend a move that has only been made necessary by their own past spin sins, and the NUT go on the offensive to blindly deny that any schools are failing, the children the education system are meant to help are being sorely let down, and in far too many cases lives are being ruined when they have only just begun.

Boris Johnson’s Mayoralty gave a thumbs up to London’s taxpayers as it’s emerged that he’s sacked the first tranche of politically correct non-jobbers in City Hall.  Gone already are the 40 copies of the Morning Star City Hall bought every single day.  Now out of the door are the non-jobbers who read it!

Former Mayor Livingstone’s partner Emma Beal was employed as an ‘administration assistant’.  The post of ‘women’s advisor’ is no more.  The ‘cultural and events adviser’, who incidentally was identified as a member of Socialist Action, also needs to find another job as does the ‘senior policy adviser on the creative industries’.  As one who has campaigned against these non-jobs since coming to the TPA, it is welcome news indeed.  The total savings made by yesterday’s clean-out will save taxpayers £400,000 a year, £1.6million over Mayor Johnson’s 4-year term.

So rejoice at the news.  We can only hope David Cameron pays heed to the good work Johnson is doing already and that this is a sign of what a future Conservative government will do in office.  Our Town Halls are swamped with pointless non-jobbers taxpayers can easily live without, taking scarce resources from the frontline and hiking up Council Tax bills in the process.  Too many councils have become an echo of central government by filling their payroll’s with armies of non-job bureaucrats, no matter what party they are.  Perhaps it’s time for some councils to stand up and say ‘no more’. 

What is clear is the growing, intense public anger the levels of waste in government.  Yet there is some hope as the politicians, starting with Boris Johnson, are beginning to listen and act.  Whether it’s this year, the next or even after the general election, the writing is on the wall for non-jobbers…

The right of British people to protection comes below that of a foreign national to not be deported to their country of origin.  Abu Qatada preaches hate against the west and this our country. However, the very freedoms he preaches against now protect him from deportation.

Not considered is whether the British people want him here. Whether we would rather spend the £500,000 it costs to keep him on a leash on other things. We could put this money towards providing appropriate equipment for the Britons charged with fighting Qatada’s ideological soul mates in Afghanistan and Iraq. We could provide appropriate compensation to some of those injured defending our nation. Alternatively we could deploy the policemen charged with monitoring him to catch criminals. However we chose to spend this money on monitoring a person who preaches anti western hate who refuses to move from the west.

The bail conditions are stringent but not satisfactory. He cannot use phones, must stay in his house for 22 hours a day and cannot associate with Osama Bin Laden. This is an odd condition because Osama Bin Laden is unlikely to pop in to visit Qatada. Osama is the world’s most hunted man. He probably has more important things to do – uploading his latest video on You Tube no doubt.

If Bin Laden did pop by for a cup of tea/glass of lemonade – whatever his chosen tipple is – presumably we would be obliged to arrest Bin Laden. However, having arrested him we would not then be able to deport Bin Laden to either America or Saudi Arabia. Both of them would sentence him to death. The ECHR prevents us deporting people to countries that practice the death penalty or would torture or ill treat the deportee. Hence we would have to put Osama under some form of house arrest while charges were brought – paid for by you the taxpayer.

How Qatada is meant to associate with Bin Laden anyway given he has no access to the internet or a phone is a mystery. Presumably Qatada will begin breeding carrier pigeons. This is bad news for public monuments across our fair cities. They will now bear the full brunt of our Governments new tough policies on terror.

One wonders what Qatada will do in his 2 spare hours. Is he allowed to store them up? Is it a case of use them or lose them? Qatada has a lot of time to consider how to spend his free 2 hours. He is currently in receipt of state benefits. These are needed to sustain him. Unable to leave the house for 22 hours a day it is difficult for him to actively seek work. Presumably the Government will one day announce a New Deal for Jihadists but until that day happens he is unemployed and unemployable.

This begs the question how many people like Qatada are subject to such monitoring and are living in council houses at the taxpayer’s expense. If we re-housed them all in the same property presumably we could save a great deal of money. If you televised it I am sure Channel 4 would buy it. A sort of Jihadist Big Brother could be produced. Qatada is in the diary room – he is very upset at having his mobile phone taken away.

But seriously if we were interested in enforcing the law we could have averted this. Qatada arrived in Britain under a forged passport in September 1993 and claimed asylum. Why was he allowed to subvert the correct procedures? Why when we realised he had forged his passport was he not immediately deported. Instead we allowed him to stay. We granted him asylum. In February 2001 anti terror police found he had £170,000 in cash and £805 in an envelope marked "For the Mujahedin in Chechnya". No charges were brought. Such incidences beg the question of what the point is in having border controls if they are not enforced. Britons rightly expected the law to be enforced and this man to be put on a plane and deported but he was not deported.

However, it is not all doom and gloom. The good news for Britain is that Abu Qatada has been released just in time to be the Labour candidate in Haltemprice and Howden. I think the campaign could prove a winner – People like me should not be on the streets, back 42 days.

Yesterday the country looked on aghast as Abu Qatada was released from prison despite being Osama Bin Laden’s “right hand man in Europe”.  I blogged a few weeks ago on how the government had its priorities wrong regarding prison sentences and justice policy.  Yesterday’s justice-blackout epitomised the government’s approach to law and order as a shambolic abrogation of the responsibility to keep us safe.

Serious criminals hide behind ‘human rights’ legislation to evade punishment.  You would think, given the case, the government would repeal the Human Rights Act to see that these dangerous terrorists are put behind bars and met with the swiftest of justice.  That, however, would mean rearranging Britain’s relationship with the great safe haven for the political class, the EU.  So don’t expect a repeal of the law anytime soon.

Whereas our own government treats serious criminals like vulnerable children, it uses the legal sledgehammer to silence any sort of domestic dissent.  Council Tax protestors are jailed for refusing to pay part of their Council Tax.  Dragged through the courts at huge expense, these often elderly political protesters are clearly dangerous enough to warrant a 28-day prison sentence.  If you leave your bin out a day early, don’t shut the lid or put one – just one – piece of rubbish in the wrong bin, you’re done for. 

Town Hall 007’s routinely use anti-terrorist legislation against us to survey any everyday activity they can make a ‘criminal’ offence.  You could be walking your dog or taking your children to school but the Council could be, or are, watching.  What they do with the data is anyone’s guess, but it’s surely not a good idea for anyone to have access to details of when you’ll be out of your house on a regular basis.

Even though government-speak has turned British taxpayers into ‘customers’, we’re hardly ever being served.  Councils charge us for bins, for services we think we’re paying through-the-nose for in Council Tax.  It’s more like we’re in the servitude of our political masters, bankrolling their expenses, jollies and lavish salaries. 

With all the talk about preserving British liberties, from the debate over 42 days detention to David Davis’s forced by-election, we have witnessed a stark contrast, the two Britains of today.  The law abiding face a lifetime of surveillance from a state that distrusts them, even so much as to have a say on the EU Constitution Lisbon Treaty, and turns normal behaviour into criminal activity.  Those who pose a deeper, larger threat to the public and nation, however, are set free, given police protection and allowed to keep any state ‘benefits’ they may have been on beforehand.  It’s a sharp contrast that should leave a bitter taste in the mouths of British taxpayers up and down the country.  How did it all come to this?

Further to my post on Friday, the leaders of EU member states – including our own – have been lining up to discuss how to ignore the Irish referendum result rejecting the EU Constitution Lisbon Treaty. I’m pleased to see, therefore, that EUReferendum’s Richard North and Open Europe’s Neil O’Brien have team up on a petition demanding that the UK Government respect the referendum and drop ratification proceedings. Do sign the petition – it went live this morning and already has 5,457 signatures, so it seems to be gathering momentum!

The twin aims of increasing state surveillance and using such technology to increase taxes have taken a bit of a beating in recent days – good news for taxpayers, who would have had to foot the bill for Government’s incompetent implementation of the technology and cough up for the higher charges, too.

First, Norwich Union’s "pay as you drive" car insurance, which would use satellites to track your whereabouts at any given moments in order to tax you, has bitten the dust – apparently because people simply don’t like being constantly watched by an eye in the sky. This is significant because it was widely seen as an unofficial trial run of the Government’s road pricing scheme.

Having apparently failed to attract much more than 10% of their intended 100,000 customers, NU have had to ditch the scheme for financial reasons to, according to Radio 4′s Money Box, which discussed the sheer expense of installing black boxes in every car, keeping the constant satellite tracking going, processing bills correctly etc. If an experienced, specialist insurance firm with a good reputation and strong finances can’t manage it, what chance have the Government got of doing it properly and successfully?

Now, it emerges that one of the first councils in the country to pursue pay-as-you-throw bin taxes by microchipping bins has had to abandon that scheme, too. Not only did the technology not work, but flytipping rose 250% as we had warned. Understandably, a lot of people seem to have removed the chips, too – after all, having a council computer full of information about when you are and aren’t at home is a honeypot for potential burglars.

The Government still have five pilots of the technology set to being within the next year, which they should surely cancel given the fiasco in South Norfolk and elsewhere.

There are a number of problems with using snooper technology to push taxes up. First, people don’t like to be spied on. Second, the State is so incompetent that such schemes are hugely expensive and information is at risk of being lost. Third, for all the talk about fairness these proposals are almost universally about pushing taxes up – some bin taxes could see households pay upwards of £400 a year extra. Finally, as we’ve seen over the last few days, they just don’t work.

With only one constituency left to declare, and only nine having voted "yes" (and one of those only doing so by 6 votes) it seems the Irish electorate have voted solidly to reject the EU Constitution Lisbon Treaty. It is imperative, not only for democracy but also for any sense of accountability that politicians in Brussels and in every EU capital city accept the result and listen to the people.

The EU, and the national politicians who are so much more keen on integration than their constituents, have an awful track record for ignoring referendum results.

In 1992, Denmark rejected the Maastricht Treaty, but instead of accepting the No vote and ditching the Treaty, it was put to another vote in 1993. Back in 2001, Ireland voted No to the Nice Treaty, but again another referendum was swiftly scheduled and it passed. Most recently, in 2005 the French and the Dutch voted No to the EU Constitution but instead of killing the document, it was reincarnated as the current Lisbon Treaty and brought straight back, this time without referenda in any country other than Ireland, despite being an almost identical document.

The EU cannot – and must not – continue flouting the law and the express will of the people. This Treaty has been rejected by the only people who have been given the opportunity to vote on it. In its previous guise as the Constitution it was roundly rejected by both France and Holland, both key EU players, and the British Government have chickened out of holding the referendum they promised in their 2005 manifesto because it was clear the British people would vote No. Legally it should die as soon as any one country refuses to ratify. And yet what is happening as a result of the Irish vote?

Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the Commission, has called for other states to continue ratification.

Gordon Brown has phoned President Sarkozy to assure him the UK will press ahead with ratifying the Treaty in Parliament.

The Dutch are continuing with ratification, despite the express wishes of their voters in 2005.

There is a clear divide regarding the European project – the people repeatedly vote No when they are asked about continuing integration, but the political class seem dedicated to forcing it through regardless. This cannot continue. The EU spends billions of pounds of our money, and controls an estimated 80% of our new legislation. The taxpaying and voting public cannot continue to be frozen out of the legislative and public policy arena – it is antidemocratic and offensive to the 450 million people who live in EU member states.

The collective leaders of the EU and its member nations should listen to the message being sent to them by the Irish people today. Judging by their track record, and their early responses, though, they won’t listen and will do their best to ride roughshod over our express wishes. If that happens, taxpayers’ money will continue to be spent inefficiently and unaccountably behind closed doors, screeds of unscrutinised legislation will continue to flow from Brussels into Whitehall, British business will continue to be throttled by red tape and public resentment of the undemocratic way the EU operates will continue to grow. One thing is sure – we cannot go on like this.

The Freedom of Information (FoI) Act has been one of the greatest innovations in British political history in the way it has opened up Government to the public, allowing us to see a great deal of what is done with our money behind closed doors. It’s not perfect, it’s not comprehensive enough and it’s not backed up by sufficient punishments for those public bodies that flout it, but even the sneak peek behind the scenes that it allows means public servants can no longer operate secure in the knowledge that us poor chumps will never find out what they are doing with our money.

We make great use of FoI requests both in compiling large research papers and in uncovering one-off instances of waste, which in turn attract media attention to the fact that all too often our money is poured down the drain. Increasingly, our activists are sending off their own Freedom of Information requests to uncover waste around the country, so I thought it could be handy to provide a quick anatomy of a successful use of the Act.

May 22nd

We noticed that this company listed the British Council (taxpayer funding = £200m) as a satisfied customer – having apparently commissioned a tailor-made typeface from them, "British Council Sans". In the words of Tony Bains, Head of Design at the British Council,

Commissioning our own font was the best investment we could have made in our identity

This struck us as: a) completely unnecessary, b) probably very expensive. Just about every publicly funded body is subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and a quick look at the British Council’s web site revealed their FoI department’s contact details.

The key thing with writing an FoI request is to get the wording right. It should be clear, functional and unequivocal about what you want to find out – don’t worry about it being boring, repetitive or too pernickety. Whilst many FoI Officers are perfectly happy to release information, some are expert at wriggling through cracks in peoples’ requests and if the information you’re after is particularly sensitive they may well be under a lot of pressure to find an excuse not to tell you. Make the wording precise, though, and they will find it difficult not to. Remember, too, to specify you are demanding the information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000!

In this instance we asked:

I would like to know details of

i) how much money was paid by the British Council to Monotype Imaging for the production and design of British Council Sans, the British Council’s font.
ii) in what financial year this transaction took place.
iii) what font the British Council used in its documents prior to the introduction of British Council Sans.
iv) please send me a copy of the British Council Sans font.

Once you’ve made your request, they have 20 days to reply. Mark it in your diary (in this case June 19th) sit back and wait!

June 11th

Dear Mr Wallace
Apologies for the delay in responding to your request.

The British Council paid £50,000 overall for the production and design of ‘British Council Sans’.  Payment was made after receipt of two invoices: the first payment date for £30,000 was 26/3/2002 and a second final payment of £20,000 on 25/7/2002.  I understand that the old fonts were Century Schoolbook and Univers.

Please find attached a copy of the font.  To my knowledge, no similar requests have been received by the British Council…

Our suspicions were proved right – £50,000 for a typeface is ridiculous to say the least. Here it is, in all its £50,000 glory, the font that cost taxpayers more than a year’s salary for three soldiers:

So, we phoned media contacts, sent a press release to the newspapers and kept our fingers crossed for the next day…

June 12th

The Daily Mail and The Sun ran the story – waste has successfully been revealed, and public servants held to account!

Of course, it doesn’t always run so smoothly. Sometimes you’ll find that the waste you may have suspected didn’t occur, or the body you are investigating may try to block your request, in which case you may want to appeal to the Information Commissioner.

We’ll provide tips on how to squirrel out information under those more difficult circumstances another time, but in the meantime, why not try putting in your own Freedom of Information requests? You can look at your local council, Primary Care Trust or Regional Development Agency, a Government Department or any one of 1,162 quangos and other agencies we recently uncovered. This is about throwing open the way the state spends our money, so go to it, and if you uncover taxpayers’ money being wasted, let us know!

Now the precedent has been set, how much more will it cost taxpayers to maintain the Government’s majority? There are a lot of votes coming up and a lot of unpopular and controversial measures to be discussed. If there are rebels too principled to be bought, as there clearly were in the Labour party last night, then MPs who would otherwise be automatically loyal will undoubtedly realise their support is now worth withholding until they get a good offer. Imagine if John Major’s Government, bedevilled by rebellions and a wobbly majority, had taken this route, simply buying itself the legislation it wanted. The Government might have got through more of its desired legislation, but taxpayers would have been bankrupted within a year or two. At this rate, we still might.

The application of pressure and the negotiation of concessions is a valuable and indeed crucial part of the Parliamentary process, but those concessions won in return for votes are meant to be improvements in the Bill being debated. By all means discuss more safeguards, re-wording or sunset clauses, but simply selling or buying votes in return for taxpayers’ money being poured into one constituency or another demeans the process and does nothing to improve the legislation.

This seems to have been pork barrel politics of the worst kind – a Prime Minister buying the survival of his Government by splashing cash on particular parts of the country in return for the local MP’s support. The sum suggested by the Conservatives is anywhere up to £1.2 billion, which equals almost £50 for every household in the land. I don’t suppose the price matters so much if you can force taxpayers to foot the bill for you.

If the allegations are true that Gordon Brown effectively used to taxpayers’ money to buy the votes of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) on 42 days internment without charge yesterday, it is a national disgrace that bodes extremely ill for taxpayers.