Transparency Campaigner Stumps Wiggin Auditor

Leominster resident Jim Miller has been hot on the tail of his local MP Bill Wiggin, who regular readers will know is in all sorts of trouble regarding his expenses. In the latest twist Piggin’ Wiggin is refusing to comment on why he spent £1,166.10 “wholly, exclusively and necessarily” for his duties as an MP on various digital cameras. In one year.

Wiggin is refusing to be interviewed or to even meet with Miller to address some of the concerns raised. Why?

Well if Miller’s track record is anything to go by it could be the nail in the coffin for the troughing Tory whip. Miller put together a report into his local councillors expenses. Many of which are Wiggin allies and supporters. Highlighting flaws and cases to answer, Miller sent it over to the council’s auditor. The blunt reply says it all:

Subject: Cllr Expenses
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 16:07:56 +0100
From: ¦¦¦¦¦¦@herefordshire.gov.uk
To: ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦
CC: ¦¦¦¦¦¦@herefordshire.gov.uk

Dear Mr Miller

Regarding you complaints I write to inform you that after today I will not be employed by Herefordshire Council, Both your complaints are being investigated by the Audit Team, and a reply will be sent to you.

If you have any further queries on the subject please contact Carrie Wright at the above email address

Thank you

Tony Ford

Chief Internal Auditor

No answer. Wiggin has his association AGM this weekend and is heading into it as the only MP to be investigated a second time for his expenses. One of those to sign Wiggin’s nomination forms at the election has quit the Tories in disgust at the various expenses messes. He will be standing as an independent in May.

Wiggin must be hoping there are no more surprises on the way…

View the original article here

Transparency Campaigner Stumps Wiggin Auditor

Leominster resident Jim Miller has been hot on the tail of his local MP Bill Wiggin, who regular readers will know is in all sorts of trouble regarding his expenses. In the latest twist Piggin’ Wiggin is refusing to comment on why he spent £1,166.10 “wholly, exclusively and necessarily” for his duties as an MP on various digital cameras. In one year.

Wiggin is refusing to be interviewed or to even meet with Miller to address some of the concerns raised. Why?

Well if Miller’s track record is anything to go by it could be the nail in the coffin for the troughing Tory whip. Miller put together a report into his local councillors expenses. Many of which are Wiggin allies and supporters. Highlighting flaws and cases to answer, Miller sent it over to the council’s auditor. The blunt reply says it all:

Subject: Cllr Expenses
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 16:07:56 +0100
From: ¦¦¦¦¦¦@herefordshire.gov.uk
To: ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦
CC: ¦¦¦¦¦¦@herefordshire.gov.uk

Dear Mr Miller

Regarding you complaints I write to inform you that after today I will not be employed by Herefordshire Council, Both your complaints are being investigated by the Audit Team, and a reply will be sent to you.

If you have any further queries on the subject please contact Carrie Wright at the above email address

Thank you

Tony Ford

Chief Internal Auditor

No answer. Wiggin has his association AGM this weekend and is heading into it as the only MP to be investigated a second time for his expenses. One of those to sign Wiggin’s nomination forms at the election has quit the Tories in disgust at the various expenses messes. He will be standing as an independent in May.

Wiggin must be hoping there are no more surprises on the way…

View the original article here

Usefulness of transparency

Usefulness of transparency
Chris Daniel  •  Better Government  •  Friday 25 March 2011

It is so often claimed by opponents of transparency that it does not have a purpose, that it is meaningless to the average man on the street or that it puts an additional burden on already stretched departments or councils. This is all nonsense. An overused cliché issued by proponents of transparency is that “sunlight is the best disinfectant”, but it is an overused cliché for a reason: it’s true. Councils across the UK have been dragged kicking and screaming into complying with publishing all spending over £500 online. And one – Nottingham City council – still arrogantly refuses to budge.

There are others that have released documents in an unreadable format but transparency has to be useful, too. This week, data analysis companies Rosslyn Analytics and QlikTech have offered assistance to HM Treasury in “obtaining an accurate view of UK Government Department Spending Data.” And this is precisely why public data should be useful. It’s true that Government data releases can often overwhelm in their volume and complexity, however with companies like this stepping into the fold – and there’s many more out

The best disinfectant?

there too, see here, here and here for example – the figures can be crunched down into simple statistics and interesting graphics. In partnership, these companies propose to “aggregate public sector expenditure data from all major departments in April for free within a record-breaking two week period.” So at no cost to the taxpayer either.

This will not just be of benefit to taxpayers but also departments as they look for savings. Take this parliamentary question for example:

Charlie Elphicke, MP for Dover & Deal, “how much government departments budgeted for expenditure on IT in 2010-11, and what changes to forecast expenditure there have been as a result of his policy on IT procurement since May 2010,” Francis Maude responded by stating: “We don’t collect total spend on IT.”

No doubt a third party could have knocked this together into handy graphs at no cost to the taxpayer if usable data was out there, in the open. Data transparency is not just for the benefit of taxpayers but also the entire public sector, right from central to local government.

We do not manually moderate comments, but from time to time the spam filter may hold your comment for approval. To avoid this, please be sure to use good grammar, avoid submitting too many links in any one comment and refrain from excessive profanity.

View the original article here

HR transparency in local government

HR transparency in local government
Rory Meakin  •  Better Government  •  Thursday 24 March 2011

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) recently held a consultation on its proposed ‘Code of recommended practice for local authorities on data transparency.’ The proposed code requires councils to publish information according to three key principles: demand-led, timely and open. To meet these principles, it sets out a commendable list of standards and expectations for councils to disclose data in an automatic, useful manner. For instance, it requires publication of both ‘csv’ and ‘pdf’ file types as a minimum. Pdf is more useful for viewing immediately, whereas a csv file (short for ‘comma separated values’) is a list of pure text formatted only by commas; not very user-friendly for immediate viewing but highly useful if you plan to rearrange or do any other work with it.  We very much welcomed the proposed code, but thought it could be strengthened further by removing loopholes some councils might otherwise exploit to drag their feet. You can see our full response below for our full range of recommendations.

But we also suggested something else that wasn’t in the proposed code at all – HR transparency. We said that public bodies subject to the code should publish a complete list of job titles and job descriptions of every single member of staff. We don’t think it’s necessary to publish remuneration details of staff on junior salaries. But it is important that taxpayers know what staff are employed to do and how many there are doing certain things. Publication of this information would surely lead to more informed debate about priorities in council spending which, in turn, would lead to more care in recruitment and staff allocation.

Taking care?

Hammersmith & Fulham council have made a great step forward in this area of their own accord, publishing detailed structure charts with every single job title. A win for transparency which other councils should emulate, but even they could go further, as our proposal for including job descriptions shows. DCLG and Hammersmith & Fulham should both be congratulated for their moves toward greater openness and transparency. But we should insist on HR transparency across the board and we hope that DCLG include our proposal in their final document.

We do not manually moderate comments, but from time to time the spam filter may hold your comment for approval. To avoid this, please be sure to use good grammar, avoid submitting too many links in any one comment and refrain from excessive profanity.

View the original article here

Tax Transparency

Guido was at a private dinner last week held by an influential think-tank; around the table sat a senior Tory tax policy expert, right-of-centre wonks and an investment banker turned MP newly promoted to the government payroll. The talk was of consolidating national insurance and income tax into one headline figure. The Mail and the Sunday Times have been given the same steer that it is on the budget agenda.

The myth that national insurance is some kind of insurance to fund the welfare state no longer fools anyone. NI is just another income tax, even if it is called “employer’s NI” it is still a tax on the employee’s income. Consolidating the taxes will make income tax more transparent, the headline starting rate  is really 32% not 20%, higher rate taxpayers pay 52% not 40% of their income in taxes. The marginal rate for those on £100,000 is 60%. Making this clearly transparent will make it easier in the long run to win the political argument that we are taxed enough already. It is politically difficult to justify taking more than half a worker’s income in taxes, Guido would further argue it is immoral for the state to take the majority of the fruit of our labour. Feudal serfs kept more of their income. Transparency on taxes will inform the argument more clearly to the public.

The bad news is Osborne is expected to bring the 40% higher rate threshold down to pay for a rise in the lower rate threshold, putting 750,000 more taxpayers on the higher 40% rate. That’ll be the squeezing of the middle…

UPDATE: From the comments:

Employer’s NI is paid on all income and Employee’s continues at 1% after they reach the upper threshold The resulting tax rates are therefore 43.8%, for basic rate taxpayers, 53.8% for middle rate taxpayers, and 63.8% for those paying top rate tax. NI is going up in April so you can add 2% to all these rates.

View the original article here