Good afternoon,

I hope you’ve been following our investigation into government waste with the Daily Mail. As I said on Monday, we splashed the front page of the paper and our work featured on eight more pages inside. And on Tuesday and Wednesday, we had four-page spreads on overseas aid and waste at the BBC.

Our work with the Mail caught attention elsewhere - the Health Secretary Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP was asked on Sky News about the £50,000 his department had spent on takeaways; Henry Smith MP asked whether we will stop sending aid to China in Foreign Office questions.

This was all in the run up to Wednesday’s Spending Review - even disregarding the pandemic, we know that the government is going to spend more money. But we can’t let them forget that billions of pounds of our money is wasted - so they must take action to protect taxpayers.

You can watch our chairman Mike Denham’s reaction to the Spending Review here. As a former Treasury and City economist, he was well-placed to give a rapid big picture assessment of our fiscal position.

Our work is continuing with a wider effort to encourage the government to Save to Spend - only embarking on expensive infrastructure projects once savings have been made elsewhere to fund them.

We’ll also be working to Clean Up The State - putting pressure on the government to curb spending on the mass of quangos and public bodies, while genuinely embracing diversity of thought in the public sector. 

We are Britain’s waste watchdog.

We stand up for you and the millions of other taxpayers who play second fiddle in the Westminster debates - which seem to be a competition on who can spend the most taxpayers’ money.

And the huge success of our joint investigation with the Daily Mail is just a taster for what we have planned in 2021.

Thanks for your continuing support, as ever.

Best wishes,
John 

John O'Connell
Chief Executive