The Tax Payers Alliance claim on their website to be “Britain’s independent grassroots campaign for lower taxes” and go on to suggest that “After years of being ignored by politicians of all parties, the TPA is committed to forcing politicians to listen to ordinary taxpayers.” Sadly these fine words ring hollow if the message which the politicians need to hear is not something that the TPA see as being important.

A recent example was the ceremonial funeral for Baroness Thatcher. It was a costly affair in the terms of a funeral of any other Prime Minister in over 45 years. The decision to hold such a ceremony was bound to be contentious and one would have expected that any group that was Independent of the political establishment would have wanted to challenge this use of £3.6M of public funds. However the funeral itself became intertwined with a series of events on the 17th April 2013 including one that was  announced in the Daily Telegraph blog. Matthew Sinclair the Chief Executive of the TPA spoke at the event organised by the Freedom Association. This organisation like the Tax Payers Alliance is an organisation that believes in Freedom for certain views only. On that occasion their meeting was also addressed by two Conservative MEPs, one Conservative MP and Mark Littlewood of the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Last week the TPA published an article by Robert Oxley, their Campaign Manager titled ‘Benefits aren’t always the solution’ in response to a report by two agencies Oxfam and Church Urban Fund. Walking the Breadline focuses on the rapid growth of demand on foodbanks across the UK and the causes and implications. This is an important issue and just because Oxfam and CUF have extensive experience in addressing poverty within the UK and are clearly committed to ending its causes, doesn’t mean that their words should go unchallenged.  However challenging this sort of report is odd territory for the TPA as most food banks do not get any funding from the state and the cost of food poverty to the State through increased pressure on the health service should be of intense concern to the TPA. Also the impact of delays in paying out benefits by the DWP which the report cites as one of the reasons for the high demand (and is briefly acknowledged in the TPA response) is surely the sort of inefficiency that a real Independent voice for taxpayers would want to see highlighted and addressed.

The sole thrust of the TPA response is to challenge the one part of the Breadline report which makes a case that reductions to benefits will increase demand on foodbanks. Not only is this an obvious truism, but it also forms only a small part of the report. The response by the TPA as the name of their article suggests is to argue for an approach that is not about benefits. Instead Robert Oxley suggests that the current heightened demand would be mitigated if taxes for the low paid were abolished (a proposal which is entirely consistent with the Breadline report) and if taxes on consumption such as VAT and Fuel Duty were also abolished (Mr Oxley fails to explain how to pay for the reduction of these taxes). The TPA piece goes on to suggest that planning rules and Government energy policy should be changed or abolished along with the Common Agriculture Policy. He then suggests that the campaigners who oppose benefit cuts are at fault for demanding more expenditure by the state. Perhaps the TPA could write a new report to explain how Pensioners can manage without their state benefits and provide a clear plan for generating some 3M new jobs. Until then I think we need a new Alliance to represent the views of taxpayers in a truly unbiased manner that can also provide a coherent response or endorsement to reports such as Walking the Breadline.