📰 Weekly Bulletin

Hospital estate spending: taxpayers could save hundreds of millions

Our latest research has found that NHS trusts could have saved almost £220 million in gas and electricity costs.

As part of an exclusive with the Daily Mail our findings raise serious questions about the huge spending disparities between hospitals on essential items.

But it's not just energy where savings can be made. We also discovered that disparities in laundry costs between hospitals leave room for millions more in potential savings.

So too in catering where hospitals were found to have paid well over the odds for meals, to the tune of £10 per meal and more - with no marked improvement in quality!

With the new health and social care levy coming into force and energy prices skyrocketing, struggling taxpayers need the NHS to be eradicating these inefficiencies.

Hospital bosses should ensure they are offering value for money for patients and taxpayers in every pound spent.

Click here to read the research in full.

Grassroots: Town Hall Rich List Roadshow arrives in Hythe

For the first leg of our Town Hall Rich List Roadshow we paid a visit to the Kent coast. More specifically Hythe where the local authority had the most council bosses in the county receiving remuneration in excess of £100,000.

Setting out our stall in the town centre, residents we spoke to were staggered by our findings. Many questioned if execs were worth the money particularly given a recent 3 per cent increase in council tax. Even a council employee said her bosses were paid too much!

For the next leg of the roadshow we're heading to Morpeth in the north east of England. If you'd like to come and campaign with us or simply say hello please get in touch.

TaxPayers' Alliance in the news

NHS hospitals spent £800k on gender-neutral toilets

Just when you thought it wasn't possible for the health service to waste more money we unearthed shocking expenditure on gender-neutral loos. Data obtained by the TPA and published in the Daily Mail reveals that nearly 740 new unisex toilets were either built or converted since 2018.

Asked to comment on the finding our investigations manager Elliot Keck told Daily Mail readers, "Taxpayers are sick of seeing NHS managers splash out on redundant refurbishments. Gender-neutral toilets go against clear government guidance that there 'needs to be proper provision of gender-specific toilets'."

The TPA is putting NHS trusts on notice. They must stop these costly conversions and focus money on frontline health services.'

Cut taxes to ease the cost of living

The cost of living continues to plague millions of households across the country. Many, but not all, who are entitled have received their £150 council tax rebate in recent weeks. But does this go far enough?

Speaking to listeners on BBC Radio Cornwall our media campaign manager Danielle Boxall argued that the government needs to ease the tax burden on Brits. The recent increase in national insurance has done little to help matters and rising inflation is dragging more people into higher rates of income tax.

We'll continue to ramp up the pressure on the government to make much-needed tax cuts. Click here to listen to the interview.

Government should abolish the death tax

Figures obtained by The Telegraph show that families have fallen foul of complex inheritance tax regulations and the taxman has clawed in hundreds of millions of pounds as a result.

Families who were caught by what tax experts described as "little-known rules". Once again it raises questions about Britain's unnecessary complicated tax code.

Responding to the news we stood up for taxpayers, pointing out that, "Taxpayers facing the cost of living crisis are struggling with the increasing burden of inheritance tax. Not only does the frozen threshold hit hard-working families' savings which have already been taxed once, but the reams of reliefs add a great deal of unnecessary complexity to the tax code.

We're keeping the pressure on the government to abolish IHT entirely and show a more compassionate attitude towards the bereaved.

Blog of the week

How to ditch diversity demagogues

In March Rishi Sunak, committed to crackdown on wasteful spending across Whitehall by cutting £5.5 billion worth of waste. Billions were wasted during the pandemic and there are billions more to be found, so this is a welcome initiative for taxpayers.

As our political director James Roberts writes this week, one place the chancellor could start is the vast number of diversity and inclusion managers.

There is no legal requirement or penalty for employers for not having a dedicated diversity, equality and inclusion officer. Taxpayers are struggling to get by and are sick of having to pay for diversity non-jobs.

Rishi should require government bodies to think again, scrap these unnecessary positions and begin to tackle the post-pandemic pile of wasteful spending. Click here to read the full story.

War on Waste

The price of spin

Analysis of government figures by The Sun has unearthed the massive taxpayer-funded sums lavished on "government spin doctors". According to the paper Brits "footed a £27 million bill to pay for government spin doctors in a single Whitehall department last year."

It's quite frankly unacceptable that while taxpayers faced down the pandemic, the Cabinet Office splashed out millions for media managers. It’s high time ministers clamp down on these surging spin costs and deliver hard-pressed households some much-needed savings.

Please send me your examples of public sector waste.

Harry Fone
Grassroots Campaign Manager

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