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David Cameron

TaxPayers’ Alliance sets out powers the PM should bring home from European Council

Dec 6th, 2011
by Robert Oxley.
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The TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) today (Tuesday December 6th) sets out how David Cameron has, for the first time in a generation, a serious opportunity to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU and seek the repatriation of powers back to the UK.

Click here to read the full report

Click here for the complete press release

Setting out a list of twenty policy changes that could make up any new deal between the UK and the EU, the TPA says the British Government could take immediate action on six of these areas without the need for any agreement in Brussels. The remaining fourteenwill require negotiation at the European Council on December 9th.

The twenty pieces of the policy jigsaw cannot be tackled in isolation. Britain is in a strong negotiating position and should force these issues onto the agenda.

Any package of reforms brought home from the European Council should be judged in comparison to this list; otherwise the Government could declare victory while delivering a poorer deal for taxpayers.

Click here to read the full report

Click here for the complete press release

Fourteen pieces of this jigsaw should be on the negotiating table at the European Council:

  • Bringing to an end the treaty objective of “ever closer union”
  • Repatriating the Common Agriculture Policy to national government control
  • Repatriating the Common Fisheries Policy
  • Repatriating control over International Development
  • Radical cuts to budgets where policies have limited demonstrable benefit
  • Slashing the UK budgetary share
  • Re-establishing the Social Chapter opt-out
  • Ensuring UK Parliamentary sovereignty overrides EU law
  • Dropping UK participation in EU defence integration
  • Introducing flexibility involving Justice and Home Affairs, including Asylum and Immigration control
  • Restoration of UK Government powers over taxation
  • Greater freedom for Britain to enter bilateral trading agreements globally
  • Rowing back from costly EU space ambitions, particularly the Galileo programme
  • Triggering massive reform to the structures of the EU itself

There are also six areas where immediate action can be taken by the British Government and without the need for any agreement in Brussels:

  • Commissioning a measured, independent and trustworthy cost-benefit analysis of EU membership
  • Demonstrating an intent and capability to act unilaterally if necessary to improve Britain’s position
  • Appointing a Cabinet Minister to review the acquis communautaire
  • Requiring EU-sourced legislation to be printed on differently-coloured paper, and to carry a cost-benefit summary that can be compared with the EU original estimate, in order to avoid ‘gold-plating’ (extra red tape from British civil servants)
  • Securing transparency in Westminster over EU laws
  • Improved use of the national scrutiny reserve, the Parliamentary veto

This list should be considered a toolbox for the British negotiating team and should help inform the backbench business debate to be held in Parliament on Thursday 8th December. Senior Conservative Ministers have long argued for a repatriation of powers; now that they have the chance, they must exploit this opportunity to make changes in the long term interests of Britain.

Tinkering with individual treaties is not enough. In the history of negotiation with the EU Britain has experienced a number of false dawns where despite winning a concession or opt-out from legislation, the policy has been enacted via the back door (such as the Working Time directive). There is no reason why Britain cannot fundamentally renegotiate its position; various nations already have differing relationships with the EU.

Click here to read the full report

Click here for the complete press release

Dr Lee Rotherham, Research Fellow of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:

“The British people are crying out for the Government to stand up to Brussels and reclaim powers that should never have been surrendered in the first place. Senior ministers who have long called for a repatriation of powers now have a once in a lifetime opportunity to negotiate with their European counterparts from a position of strength. This report sets out a comprehensive list of reasonable demands that David Cameron should take into the negotiating chamber alongside a number of steps that can be implemented immediately at home, without recourse to Brussels. The Prime Minister has an opportunity to bring home a wonderful early Christmas present for British taxpayers, it is against these benchmarks that his ability to deliver for Britain will be judged.”

David Cameron challenged at strike day PMQs about TPA report on taxpayer funding of trade unions

Dec 1st, 2011
by Jonathan Isaby.
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There has already been much publicity in the media for our report last week into Taxpayer funding of trade unions. We found that at least £113 million of taxpayers’ money was last year given to trade unions either in direct grants or through taxpayer-subsidised “facility time” – and we believe that it should be stopped.

At yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions – coinciding with the strike by many of the unions which are benefiting from that taxpayer funding – Tewkesbury MP Laurence Robertson cited our research as he raised the issue with David Cameron.


The Prime Minster agreed in his answer that it was indeed time to review the situation and said that he would end the practice of “full-time trade unionists working in the public sector on trade union business”. The exchange is the subject of a report in this morning’s Guardian and you can watch if for yourself above.

This is the second week running that TPA research has been discussed at Prime Minister’s Questions. Last week our report into excessive motoring taxes was raised with David Cameron.

David Cameron challenged at PMQs over TPA report on motoring taxes

Nov 24th, 2011
by Jonathan Isaby.
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In case you missed it, our recent report into the excessive motoring taxes paid by British drivers took centre stage in Parliament on Wednesday. We found that the residents of Maldon in Essex are clobbered by higher motoring taxes than anyone else in the country, so their local MP, John Whittingdale, asked David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions what he was going to do about this “intolerable burden”.

The Prime Minister replied by saying that he is “absolutely committed” to helping people with their motoring expenses at this time of economic difficulty – and you can be sure that we at the TPA will hold him to that. The Prime Minister added that the TaxPayers’ Alliance was doing “a good job” of highlighting the issue. Here’s the full exchange:

The Government’s rhetoric has changed on energy, but not its policy

Oct 17th, 2011
by Matthew Sinclair.
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David Cameron and Chris Huhne have written for the website MoneySavingExpert.com this morning and argued that “everything that can be done will be done to help people bring their energy bills down”. It is a fine sentiment but not matched by their actions. They are continuing to impose regulations that will drive up bills, and are no friends of consumers. Attacks on energy companies are thinly veiled attempts to distract from politicians’ complicity in rising in energy prices by attacking a sector which will enjoy higher profits as a result of the regulation they have put in place.

Prices have risen for a number of reasons including instability in the Middle East; rapid rises in demand with strong growth in major developing economies; and climate regulation. But with instability in the Middle East subsiding for now and oceans of shale gas being discovered there should be every reason to be a bit more optimistic about the pressure on households easing a little. Unfortunately, they are going to have to pay for hundreds of billions of pounds in investment under draconian climate regulations, in order to meet Brussels targets. Citigroup estimates suggest Britain has to invest around £200 billion. That is far more than our European competitors, let alone the rest of the world:

Paying for that investment will require the energy companies to make more profit. That will drive up prices by over 50 per cent in real terms according to Citigroup. Even with greater efficiency, they think we will have to pay over a third more in dual fuel energy bills in real terms, and that is before paying for the extra insulation.

There is no way of making £200 billion cheap. Fiddling around the edges trying to bring down energy company margins might help some people in the short term but won’t address the fundamentals.  Any politician who was serious about helping to bring energy bills down would reconsider some of those regulations and targets. There are a few ways they could do that: stop picking losers and giving extravagant subsidy to the least efficient sources of power; scrap the renewable energy target and just focus on the emissions target; scrap the new carbon price floor that Credit Suisse think will mean £7 billion more in profit for energy companies while just shifting emissions from Britain to other European economies according to the IPPR.

If they want to be more ambitious, and really do all they can to ease the burden on consumers, they could rethink the fundamentals of our energy policy. Instead of trying to deploy expensive sources of energy now we should focus on research. Even if we were happy to pay higher prices for our energy, major emitters aren’t going to do the same so developing new alternatives is the only way we make a practical contribution. After all, our paltry under two per cent of global emissions won’t make much difference to the climate. There is a lot more detail on how to do that in Let them eat carbon.

It’s not because they love Guinness

Sep 27th, 2011
by Emma Boon.
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Micro-blogging website Twitter is to set up a new HQ in Dublin and I’m willing to bet that it’s not because they love Guinness.

Ireland’s attractive 12.5 per cent corporate tax rate is bound to have been a big sweetener for the firm, which has been valued at upwards of £5 billion.

The news is a blow to the Treasury, who were hoping that a London office opened earlier this year would become Twitter’s European HQ. But catchy names, like Tech City and Silicon Roundabout, and even the irresistible allure of Boris Johnson are not going to be enough to convince the micro-blogging website to bring its money over here when our main rate of corporation tax is 26 per cent.

The list of internet firms who are now benefitting from Ireland’s lower corporation tax reads like the bookmarks menu on most people’s internet browsers: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay and Microsoft all have offices there, to name but a few. The presence of businesses like these means more jobs in Dublin. Google alone is one of Dublin’s biggest employers, with 2,200 staff.

With modern technology allowing them to work from almost anywhere in the world, companies like Twitter are not going to choose the UK without a more competitive corporate tax rate as an incentive. Read our briefing on corporation tax from Tax Commissioner Anthony J. Evans for more.

Further evidence green policy will push up household energy bills

Sep 6th, 2011
by Liz Holliday.
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A cautionary, yet familiar, tale on how Coalition energy policies will affect homeowners was published this week in The Daily Telegraph. The article centres on a six-page document, entitled the “impact of our energy and climate policies on consumer energy bills,” and suggests that the Government’s move to increase alternative energy (like wind turbines and nuclear power) will increase the average family’s yearly energy bill 30 per cent by 2020.

The figures in the paper, written by David Cameron’s senior energy advisor, Ben Moxham, reportedly now have the PM “very worried.” The document asserts the simple logic that increasing energy bills, at a time when most household budgets are already tight, might not leave voters at their happiest.

The notion that Coalition green policies will increasingly impact consumer household bills in the long-term is not new. Our Director, Matthew Sinclair, has been imploring the Government “to give families a better deal and cut unfair green taxes” for quite some time now. The threats of green taxes and subsidies on taxpayers are covered in details in Sinclair’s new book ‘Let them eat carbon’ In the book he discredits the claim that green taxes were “justified by the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions,” with new figures that show the taxes as “excessive compared to the harms they are meant to address”.

It looks like the message may have finally gotten through to Cameron and his team. The Daily Telegraph reports that “Ministers and officials from the Treasury, DECC [Department of Energy and Climate Change] and the Department for Communities and Local Government are expected to be called into No 10 for a high-level meeting to discuss how to pursue the policies.”

However, whether or not Cameron will finally heed the warnings have yet to be seen. Perhaps he should pick up a copy of ‘Let them eat carbon’ before taking the meeting.

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