TPA – Never Mind The Figures

Secure in his non-job at the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), the smug Chris Daniel has joined the right leaning chorus of those not only demonising local Government, but also demonising the decisions of local authorities to cut their workforces following a round of central Government spending cuts.

Daniel’s article, filled with needlessly pejorative terms and phrases, such as “Councils ... gorging on taxpayers’ money”, “councils hiking the cost”, “councils ... have gorged on taxpayers’ money”, “[councils] keep feasting by ramping up charges”, “unsustainable growth”, “misspending”, and “bloated”, will be music to those who cheerlead for the TPA and otherwise take its dubiously sourced propaganda on trust.

TPA "Report" - shame about the grammar

Sadly, Daniel’s clear inference – that local Government has been not only growing in recent years, but growing unsustainably – does not survive the most cursory of factual examinations. His use of a graph showing “Public Sector Employment” is especially disingenuous: this includes far more than local Government.

Data source: ONS

Of the rise in that headcount from 1998 to 2005, almost 600,000 (out of around 700,000) was down to the NHS, Education and Police.

This also from the ONS

And the apparently sharp increase in headcount in late 2008, as the ONS helpfully tells, was caused by the classification of employees at Lloyds Banking Group and RBS as public sector.

In fact, public sector headcount has (bank bailouts excepted) been falling since 2005, and, as previously noted, most of the rise in the preceding seven years reflected manifesto commitments by the Blair Government. Local Government headcount did not significantly change.

So that’s another TPA missive undermined by dodgy figures. No change there, then.

[UPDATE 1: this post has featured, in an edited form, on Liberal Conspiracy. My thanks, as ever, to Sunny Hundal]

[UPDATE 2: Matthew Sinclair, Director of the so-called Taxpayers' Alliance, has experienced such distress at seeing this post that he has published a rebuttal, which you can see HERE. I will desist from commenting, save to say that Sinclair's piece demonstrates superbly that the TPA's overmonied, greedy and cowardly backers are wasting their money. It couldn't happen to a more deserving group]