Last week our team went to Bournemouth for a day of campaigning and meeting local supporters. We started outside of the Town Hall where we were greeted by the Bournemouth Echo who interviewed our Chief Executive, Jonathan Isaby. Moving on to the town square, we handed out leaflets about council... Read more...
In the summer budget last year, George Osborne asked the Office for Tax Simplification to study the possible alignment of national insurance with income tax. On Monday last week they published their report, recommending that the Chancellor shifts employee national insurance contributions to make it much more like income tax:... Read more...
We at the TaxPayers’ Alliance have been vocal in the last few weeks about the importance of taxpayers’ cash not being used to bolster either side in the forthcoming EU referendum campaign. With established campaign groups funded by private donations forming to make the respective cases for Leave and Remain,... Read more...
The running sore that is the e-Borders programme is continuing to cause trouble and is starting to look at a classic of the poorly thought through government IT procurement project genre. At current projections, alongside its successor programme, it will cost over a billion pounds, be delivered 8 years late,... Read more...
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is now accepting initial offers from those interested in buying the Green Investment Bank (GIB) - a step that is very encouraging for taxpayers. The TPA have been advocating scraping or selling off GIB for a long time now, it even featured... Read more...
In July 2015, the Independent Commission on Freedom of Information was asked to look into the operation of the Freedom of Information Act, ostensibly to determine whether it struck the right balance between openness and accountability and a “safe space” for policy development. Many transparency campaigners feared that the act... Read more...
Yesterday the Scottish Government started debating whether it should use its new powers to increase the welfare bill. We think this would be a grave error. It may force Ministers to divert money away from other programmes and make it very difficult for them to live within their means. Identifiable... Read more...
Today The Sun wrote up a little bit of research undertaken by the TPA on social media spending by central government. Our research found that advertising on social media can be very expensive, in fact almost £2 million was spent on promoted Twitter and Facebook posts in a three year... Read more...
Junior doctors are going on strike again. The three planned walkouts are even more futile than the previous two now that the government has decided to impose the contract. The Health Secretary has made his decision and that is how the NHS works: the big decisions are made by elected... Read more...
With the delivery of major projects like HS2 underway, it is vital that value for money is considered at every level of government. However, today’s NAO report warns that all too often this isn’t the case. The report highlights accounting officer’s (AO) poor incentives in ministerial departments which can lead... Read more...
Given the upcoming national referendum on the UK’s continued membership of the European Union, an increasing number of journalists and others have been enquiring as to the stance that the TaxPayers’ Alliance will take on the matter. We therefore thought it appropriate to set out our position for the avoidance... Read more...
The Times front page has a story about a windfall coming to George Osborne (£) in the next budget due to lower-than-expected inflation and the declining interest payments. Capital Economics calculates the borrowing cost will be £21 billion lighter over the next 5 years. This is welcome news to a Chancellor who... Read more...
The TaxPayers’ Alliance has done research on waste in the NHS recently including poor energy and water and estate use. And many of the points we have been raised are echoed in the Carter Review published today. Similar to our findings, Lord Carter found there was “unwarranted variation” in provision... Read more...
Yesterday the Communities and Local Government Committee published its report into the state of local government devolution. The outlook is broadly positive, with a further push towards devolution, including some very encouraging noise on fiscal devolution and the retention of business rates. We at the TaxPayers' Alliance have been vocal... Read more...
The latest State of the Estate report shows that the government estate has been reduced by 2.4 million m2 since 2010- an area larger than the state of Monaco. In just the last year, the government estate has fallen by 3.1 per cent to 8.3 million m2 and the total... Read more...
We have long had our concerns about whether IPSA – the quango charged with setting and administering MPs’ pay, pensions and office costs – is delivering value for taxpayers’ money. And when it comes to buying the equipment that MPs need in order to run their offices, their procurement processes... Read more...
I wrote about tax reform for this morning's Sun (p.4). Below is the full version of the comment piece. It references tax reforms that were explored in the Single Income Tax, which was the final report of the 2020 Tax Commission. Many readers will have their own stories about dealing... Read more...
While putting together the figures for 'Compensation claims made by local authorities' we started coming across some odd figures. For your benefit we've put them all together into a compensation claims quiz so that you can see some of the oddest examples of payouts that we found. Read more...
Tata Steel is back in the news again but the circumstances haven't changed. The British steel industry is still in decline, as it has been since 1900, (and 2009) within the EU our steel industry is less important and less innovative. China's very odd steel industry is still incentivising over... Read more...
Doctors are quite possibly the worst group of people the government can get into a dispute with. At an Institute for Government event last year, the Former Labour Health Secretary Alan Milburn, a man who knows a thing or two about NHS reform, addressed a question on how to politicians... Read more...
This afternoon is the Second Reading of the Trade Union Bill in the House of Lords. The Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) has led the way in recent years in exposing the considerable taxpayer-funded subsidies to trade unions. It is wrong that taxpayers continue to see their money used to pay for... Read more...
This morning the National Audit Office released its report into the Department for Work and Pensions' management of health and disability assessment contracts. Due to various delays and problems in implementation, the savings they will now expect to see in the near term are small when compared with the total... Read more...
The last few months have been worrying for those who believe in greater transparency and openness in government. The freedom of Information laws that have kept local and national government on their toes were put under review, with lots of speculation that they would be diluted. A consultation on proposed... Read more...
In December, the news that petrol was going to dip below £1/litre was received with festive cheer by motorists. And yesterday crude oil fell under $35 a barrel so many people will assume further pump price cuts are on their way. However, the likelihood of further falls in pump prices... Read more...