Our Global Quangos Uncovered campaign reached its summit this week as we published a new factbook, shining a light on the cost to British taxpayers of unaccountable international organisations.
Our new analysis shows the UK has handed over a whopping £85 billion to organisations like the World Health Organisation (WHO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and United Nations (UN) over the last 12 years. Despite these groups facing considerable criticism in recent months and years, we’re due to fork out £7.5 billion each year until 2027!
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Responding to our findings in the Sun on Sunday, former home secretary, Priti Patel, said: “The billions of pounds spent by ministers and civil servants is taxpayers’ money who will naturally think that their Government is throwing away their hard earned cash to unaccountable international organisations, with little scrutiny or oversight in terms of what this means for them.”
These organisations have a habit of expanding their briefs and lecturing on topics well outside their purview. This week I blogged about the WHO wanting health warnings in films and TV Shows like 101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan because certain characters might be lighting up. Another group in receipt of your cash is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This week they published a report saying women in the UK were the worst binge drinkers in the developed world.Â
Whilst appearing on the BBC’s Politics Live (more on that later), our head of campaigns, Elliot Keck, called out this shoddy attempt to shame Brits enjoying a tipple: “This is another case of the OECD, a global quango that is going well beyond its remit. They were set up to help economic development and international trade and it’s now beating British women over the head for daring to have two thirds of a bottle of wine once a month!”
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TaxPayers' Alliance in the news
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TPA on Politics Live
As mentioned earlier, Elliot joined the panel of Politics Live on the BBC on Thursday. Sitting down with MPs Bim Afolami and Rosie Duffield, along with journalist Susie Boniface, Elliot put the views of taxpayers front and centre on our national broadcaster.
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With calls for ministers to be given a “kick in the pants”, Elliot took aim at the high tax Tories: “People like to talk of the Conservative Party as the party of low tax, they’ve trashed that record pretty devastatingly over the last few years… You’ve got a ÂŁ13 billion windfall because you’ve been squeezing every drop out of taxpayers. If a kick in the pants means a cut to income tax, a cut to stamp duty, then I think the government does need it.”Â
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Carol’s conundrum
Speaking of the beeb, our digital campaign manager, Joe Ventre, popped up on TalkTV, following the news that Carol Vorderman had left her BBC radio show for refusing to follow impartiality guidelines.
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Joe didn’t mince his words saying: “Anyone can see that what she did goes against what we all broadly know to be BBC rules on impartiality… A very basic expectation from TV viewers is that the broadcasting corporation that they’re paying for doesn’t espouse political opinions.”
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There’s room to cut taxes
Rounding off a broadcast heavy week for the team, our media campaign manager (he’s clearly doing a good job), Conor Holohan, took to GB News, with some advice for the chancellor about what to do with his new found fiscal headroom.
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As Conor explained to viewers across the country: “Part of the reason we’ve seen this increase in headroom is because of the stealth taxes, the frozen thresholds that are eating up everyone’s pay rises… He could use that to cut income tax.” Hear, hear!
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Four takeaways from the King’s Speech
King Charles made history on Tuesday delivering the first King’s Speech in over 70 years. In this week’s blog, our researcher, Jonathan Eida, brings us his four takeaways from the government’s stated plans.
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Amidst talk of smoking bans and football regulators, as Jonathan says: “There was little for households bearing the weight of a 70-year high tax burden to feel overly enthusiastic about.”
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We all know roaming fees can run into the thousands when we go on holiday if we’re not careful, but few would think it ok to leave the bill at the door of taxpayers.
It seems this is one lesson ministers north of the border haven’t quite learnt as the SNP’s health secretary wanted to pay his almost £11,000 charge for roaming on his iPad from the public purse. Fortunately, a public outroar was enough to shame this minister into picking up the tab himself. Elected representatives should be looking to save taxpayers’ money, not asking their constituents to bail them out.
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Benjamin Elks
Operations Manager
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