Careful about your FoI allies
AS SOMEONE who has campaigned for strong freedom of information laws in Scotland, I welcome the work and campaigning of Heather Brooke, utilising the UK laws to argue for greater transparency in UK public life via her expose of MPs’ second home allowances.
I am pleased that she continues to campaign for better laws in the UK, and hope we can continue to work together to deliver strong FOI on both sides of the border. However I feel her campaign is damaged by her association with the Taxpayers Alliance to run an online petition to publish MPs’ expenses.
The Taxpayers Alliance — which calls itself an “independent campaign for lower taxes and better government” — a claim Heather repeats on her blog — is more like a big business organisation set up to campaign for tax and public spending cuts.
Its staff is largely drawn from former Conservative student activists and members of free-market, euro-sceptic and other right-wing groups. The list of supporters on its website includes many academic free market gurus and a long list of business chiefs and monetarist economists.
Far from “better government”, what they argue for is “less government”, often targeting staff working in the public services, including UNISON and NUJ members, describing the jobs they do and the pensions they are entitled to as examples of waste.
The TPA has sometimes used inaccurate and ill-researched “facts” to grab headlines at the expense of both our members and the truth.
Obviously they are free to campaign for what they like and journalists are free to associate with them. However one of the key problems with Taxpayers Alliance support in any campaign for greater transparency and freedom of information is the secrecy it displays when asked who funds it.
The Taxpayers Alliance publishes abbreviated accounts from which income and expenditure are withheld. The last time it published full accounts was in 2006, when it recorded an income of £130,000.
But the current organisation has ten full-time staff in two offices, which suggests either its income has jumped substantially or it is loaded with debt. One wonders where their money comes from — maybe we should be extending FoI to cover bodies that purport to speak for us (the taxpayers).
Of course it is not legally required to publish such details, but the TPA stands for transparency and probity and should practise what it preaches.
And campaigners for more information and greater transparency should be demanding that they do so — not accepting what they say as gospel.
Chris Bartter
Unison, Glasgow
There is a radical alternative to the TPA called the Other Taxpayers Alliance. Go to www.taxpayersalliance.org