Unholy alliance needs balance

Something novel happened this Monday morning. Most newspapers were somehow printed without some issue cited as a totally outrageous waste of public money by the Taxpayers Alliance.

Perhaps those dedicated to a campaign of criticism aimed at Britain’s burgeoning public sector have gone on their annual hols. Even they need a break from exposing the shameful array of non-jobs in the nation’s townhalls and quangos it seems.

This apparent lull will be a blow for local & regional newspapers. Type in “Taxpayers Alliance” on the Wales Online website and you get an impressive list of hard hitting articles highlighting public sector self-indulgence and poor performance. And it seems to be two-way traffic as the TPA website has Lee Canning, Alliance spokesman in Wales quoting a South Wales Echo item on how Cardiff Council is “failing to provide one of the most basic front-line services that taxpayers expect” – thus ensuring that the news is recycled even if the refuse apparently isn’t.

Public sector trade unions point out that there is remarkable sparsity of press stories about the Taxpayers Alliance itself, especially in terms of its own finances or just the political proclivities of this influential pressure group.

This is strange since it only takes some basic research to find that the Taxpayers' Alliance is constituted as a private company limited by guarantee in the UK - number 04873888. As a small company, it is exempt from audit. This means it either has an annual turnover of £5.6 million or less, a balance sheet total of £2.8 million or less; or fewer than 50 employees. As it happens, the TPA has two offices – one in London and one in Birmingham. Its website shows that, in March 2009, that it employed 13 members of staff.

Sixty per cent of donations come from individuals or groups giving more than £5,000. These include the Midlands Industrial Council (which has donated £1.5million to the Conservatives since 2003) who provided the Alliance with £80,000 on behalf of 32 owners of private companies. David Alberto, co-owner of serviced office company Avanta, has donated a suite in Westminster worth £100,000 a year, because he opposes the level of tax on businesses. Construction magnate Malcolm McAlpine and a spokesman for JCB tycoon Sir Anthony Bamford, have said they also helped fund the TPA.

Although notionally “apolitical”, the Alliance is known to have staged a sponsored “lobbying event” last September on behalf of groups involved in the US right-wing republican Tea Party movement. The Alliance has also sought advice from the Tea Party leadership, with Matthew Elliott stating in September 2010: "We need to learn from the Tea Party movement in the US. It will be fascinating to see whether it will transfer to the UK. Will there be the same sort of uprising?”

Another insight comes from how TPA political director Susie Squire, who last year reacted with indignation at the suggestion she was a "secret Conservative" only to became a special political adviser to DWP Secretary Iain Duncan Smith.

Maybe these are too many facts for your average editor and cut-and-paste journo to absorb. Or maybe they are a bit inconvenient. Whatever the reason, it's high time that the description of "right-wing pressure group" was used in future media references to the Taxpayers Alliance - if only to restore some balance to Welsh reporting.