This week saw troubled airline Flybe strike a deal with HMRC to defer a tax payment of around £10 million in an effort to keep the company afloat. The news has reignited the debate around air passenger duty (APD) and its effects on the airline industry.

The TaxPayers' Alliance has long argued that APD is unfit for purpose and that ultimately it should be abolished. It is pleasing to read the government is considering a cut in the domestic rate of APD, currently £13 per passenger per domestic flight, in an effort to boost the industry.

Air travel receives a lot of bad press when it comes to carbon emissions and the environment. APD is not and never has been an environmental tax, it does nothing to improve the efficiency of aircraft and the wider industry. In a similar vein, global aviation only produces around 2 per cent of all human CO2 emissions.

In effect APD is just an arbitrary tax that puts jobs at risk with no discernible benefit to the environment. Indeed our campaign seems to be getting through in the press, earning a mention in Martin Vander Weyer's financial column in The Spectator this week. Let's hope the government sees sense on this important issue.

Let me know your thoughts on air passenger duty.

Many thanks to everyone who emailed about council tax rises in your area. The TPA is already planning a series of action days across the country to hold local authorities to account. As our previous research has shown council tax rose by a jaw-dropping 57 per cent in real terms between 1997 and 2017.

Councils claim their budgets are cut to the bone but our research keeps unearthing examples of wasteful spending. They must get their finances in order and stop asking us to dig ever deeper into our pockets. You can use our handy heat map to see which councils were the worst offenders last year. 

Let me know if you'd like the TPA to campaign in your area.

Bercow's golden goodbye

The outgoing Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, racked up more than £13,000 of taxpayer funded expenses according to The Daily Mail.

He spent more than £12,000 on leaving parties for four senior staff members and a staggering £1,000 for a return trip to Nottingham by taxi. At the time of writing, an anytime first class return rail ticket would only have cost £240 or £185 for standard.

Commenting on such unbecoming extravagance our political director James Roberts told the Mail, "Frittering taxpayers' funds on his farewell tour is a sad end for a Speaker who came in committing to clean up parliamentary expenses. Like so many public officials, a common sense approach to keeping down travel costs and entertainment expenses became a tall order for this spendthrift former Speaker."

What do you make of John Bercow's expenses?

Council tax and funding adult social care

Many councils have already announced that they will be raising council tax by the maximum of 4 per cent (in England) in a bid to maintain funding levels for social care. 

As I have discussed before there are significant issues around the funding of councils and the government should address them. That said, councils are not entirely blameless and as our research shows many are still wasting our money. 

Speaking to presenters Ben and Sonia on their BBC Radio Essex breakfast show I pointed that out billions of pounds can be saved in social care by embracing new technologies and automation. More than enough to plug current gaps in social care funding and better still it frees up staff to focus on patient care. Click here to listen to a clip.

What do you think should be done about local authority funding?

What's the problem with defence procurement?

Defence procurement is a constant bugbear of British governments. Numerous administrations have promised to fix it and all came up short. So what is going on? Is there actually a problem to be fixed, or is it one of perception? 

Writing for the blog this week our policy analyst Jeremy Hutton set his sights on this important issue. As he wrote about in a recent research paper on cost overruns, the Royal Navy's two new mammoth aircraft carriers doubled in cost and construction time; there were several occasions when it was unclear if they would both make it to sea at all!

The reasons for cost escalations are complex but a big factor is a lack of accountability when it comes to Whitehall mandarins and their management of long-term projects. As Jeremy writes:

"A programme like Carrier Strike will see many civil servants pass through its doors over the lifetime of the project. Some will move on to other parts of the civil service, others will retire, or perhaps move to a private sector role. This will leave them willing to make decisions that may have negative long term consequences but some short term advantages."

Do you agree with Jeremy? Is poor procurement the problem?

Cost of new council HQ soars

Opposition councillors in Falkirk are rightly worried about the spiralling costs for a new council HQ and arts centre. Labour and Conservative members have been reassured by officials that despite the project surpassing its original £45 million budget, final costs will not exceed £53.7 million.

It's good to hear that councillor Joan Coombes has been holding the council to account; speaking to the Falkirk Herald she said, "Can we really afford this new building when some villages in our communities don’t have buses any more because we can't afford to subsidise them?"

As we saw in Northamptonshire, shiny new headquarters can cause serious economic problems for both councillors and ratepayers. Council leaders should ask themselves if this really is the best use of taxpayer funds at a time when budgets are squeezed.

Please send me your examples of wasteful public spending.

Harry Fone Grassroots Campaign Manager

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