Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has announced a bonfire of laws. The coalition government wants us to recommend the laws which we think should be scrapped. I suggested a few of the TPA’s ideas on Today yesterday morning.The idea is to roll back pointless regulation and unnecessary bureaucracy that has... Read more...
With Trade Union Leaders flexing their muscles with strike threats and warnings about impending public spending cuts, the TaxPayers' Alliance presents its first Trade Union Rich List. The list compiles the detailed remuneration of all Trade Union General Secretaries and Chief Executives whose total remuneration exceeded £100,000 in the financial... Read more...
It has been reported by several newspapers this week that Broomfield hospital in Essex is looking for a 'Turnaround Director' - a cost-cutter if you like, someone who will be paid up to £1,000 a day, nearly double the salary of the prime minister and nearly seventeen times the pay... Read more...
There are many issues to debate with regard to the loan promised by the previous Government to Sheffield Forgemasters, which was cancelled by the new Coalition. A new one was opened up on Tuesday by Clive Betts, MP for Sheffield South West. Mr Betts asked a Parliamentary question to find... Read more...
Today an alliance of library interest groups including Libraries for Life for Londoners (LLL), The Library Campaign and the Campaign for the Book have released a national Charter for Change that outlines how councils could improve the library service currently offered and save over £200 million.The alliance point out that... Read more...
Listening to many media reports, you'd conclude that the Office for Budget Responsibility's forecast of private sector jobs growth had absolutely no chance of coming about. As you will know, the OBR is forecasting that private sector jobs will grow by 2m by 2015-16, more than compensating for their projected 700,000 fewer public... Read more...
One of the big dilemmas on immigration is how to manage its accompanying costs to taxpayers. It is genuinely the case that the right kind of migration - i.e. people with the right skills in the right numbers to the right places - can be of economic benefit to the... Read more...
Last Wednesday, the Hull & East Riding TPA protested againoutside County Hall in Beverley. For the reasons why we were protesting, clickHERE. The protest was also covered by the Politics Show. Tosee the footage, click HERE, and scroll in 54 minutes. I am pleased to report three Conservative... Read more...
Even in high tax Europe, Britain's tax system is starting to become seriously uncompetitive. We still, thankfully, enjoy lower taxes on labour and consumption than the high rates in the rest of Europe. But tax on capital here is significantly higher. Below is a graph of new data from Eurostat,... Read more...
It’s been revealed that in the depths of the recession former ministers were busying themselves with something that the rest of us might not consider a top priority. It’s emerged Labour spent more than £72,000 on a Whitehall "tranquillity room". As far as I can tell this consists of a... Read more...
“Ministers want 20mph limit” trumpeted The Sunday Times yesterday, with the transport minister arguing for a 20mph ban on every urban road and claiming that Islington, among many other boroughs, was ready to follow suit. Not according to a costly consultation of our local residents! Following an initiative proposed... Read more...
If you listened to today's headlines, you'll hear some news that you may find alarming - a "survey" of doctors carried out by the British Medical Association to coincide with the opening of its annual conference has apparently found that budget restraints are harming patient care and front line services.... Read more...
Let's put a stop to mumbo-jumbo on the NHS Read more...
Good news for Islington that in the wake of local dismay - my own included - at his excessive pay of £210,000, Town Hall Chief Executive John Foster has declared his intention not to renew his contract with the borough next year. New council leader Catherine West says she will... Read more...
“Payment of Members of Parliament”, claimed Lloyd George “is not a recognition of the magnitude of their service” but it is “to enable men to come here [Parliament],” for those “who cannot be here because their means do not allow it.” How then would he have reacted to the MPs’ expenses... Read more...
In the Emergency Budget report, the message on RDAs was pretty clear: "Regional Development Agencies will be abolished through the Public Bodies Bill." TPA Chief Executive Matthew Elliott wrote for Conservative Home that there was "good news on the RDAs". It was good to see our campaign for their... Read more...
Today Eric Pickles wrote to council leaders across the UK to announce an end to Comprehensive Area Assessments (CAAs). This is great news and something that we advocated in our book How to cut public spending. The cost of meeting these top-down targets is substantial: many councillors I have spoken... Read more...
A great post over at the Adam Smith Institute blog this morning shows how state control of healthcare is manifested in in the Department of Health's quangos. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) have put themselves about recently, saying - shock, horror - that unhealthy food is... Read more...
This slide in our briefing yesterday, from David B. Smith's speech, is very important. It reports provisional findings from the Beacon Economic Forecasting Quarterly Macroeconomic Model of the UK and International Economies (BEFMOD): Many people work on the assumption that the economic effects of a VAT hike will be relatively... Read more...
Given the sharp cuts announced in Wednesday’s budget, you would think that all levels of government would want to cut down on non-essential recruitment in order to maintain essential services. But instead of watching Mr. Osborne's performance on Tuesday, many local authority bureaucrats must have been watching Wimbledon instead. As... Read more...
We've had these arguments before "UK faces worst cuts since World War II says IFS." Thus the BBC headlines yesterday's budget analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. And it's a pretty good summation of how the BBC and many other media commentators sees the whole issue of fiscal restraint. Because... Read more...
The Emergency Budget gives with one hand and takes away with the other. Most people will pay less income tax - with the increase in the personal allowance from next April - but they'll have to pay more in VAT from the end of this year. You can understand the... Read more...
New Health Secretary Andrew Lansley today set out changes to the NHS Operating Framework. There are some encouraging items on abolishing the culture of targets: Guarantees of a GP appointment within 48 hours will be removed; there will be no more top-down performance management of the 18 weeks referral to... Read more...
Last week the Treasury announced their “Action to tackle poor value for money and unfunded spending commitments”, cancelling some of the former government’s projects and putting others on hold until a spending review. However it would appear that some projects have slipped through the net even though the government stated... Read more...