Good morning, 

The front page of today’s Daily Mail splashes on a major investigation into government waste - the launch of a joint project between the paper and the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

Since the summer, the whole team at the TPA has been busy submitting Freedom of Information requests, poring over government accounts and sifting through spreadsheets to identify wasteful spending.

We all know that covid has blasted a huge hole in the public finances. We also know this government intended to spend more money when it was elected. We’re told that it’s not all bad, as we currently have ultra low borrowing rates.

But we can’t allow for complacency. Ministers and officials at all levels of government waste billions of pounds of our money. There are still quangos to scrap, and programmes to ditch. If we take our eye off the ball on spending, then they’ll just come for more of our money with higher taxes.

They call it austerity when their own budgets are trimmed, but not when they trim yours.

I set out some big picture thoughts on why we must save to spend in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph, which you can read here.

Our work as Britain's waste watchdog will continue. It’s vital that we hold the government’s feet to the fire and fight to protect taxpayers.

Thank you for all of your support. We can’t do any of our work without you.

Best wishes,
John 

John O'Connell
Chief Executive