15 years of speaking up for British taxpayers The story of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, 2004-19 Andrew Allum & Matthew Elliott A B 15 years of speaking up for British taxpayers The story of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, 2004-19 by Andrew Allum and Matthew Elliott First published in Great Britain in 2019 by The TaxPayers’ Alliance Copyright ©2019 The TaxPayers’ Alliance All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the publisher’s prior permission in writing. The TaxPayers’ Alliance 55 Tufton Street, London SW1P 3QL 020 7998 1450 07795 084 113 (24-hour media enquiries) Email :
[email protected] Facebook : taxpayersalliance Twitter : @the_tpa www.taxpayersalliance.com Cover illustration: Isee.uk Design: eaststreetcreative.uk Print: valegroup.co.uk Contents Foreword 1 Starting out 4 Grassroots campaigns 11 Crusaders for transparency 17 Exposing wasteful spending 22 Shaping policy 28 Reforming tax 31 Battles on all fronts 38 Independently minded 43 Our friends 48 Always evolving 51 About the authors 55 Acknowledgements 56 Appendices I : research papers 57 II : current staff and research fellows 67 III : former staff 68 IV : advisory council 69 V : photo captions 70 Foreword Fifteen years on from its founding, the TaxPayers’ Alliance is needed now more than ever. The British taxpayer is handing over a higher proportion of their hard-earned money to the government than at any time since Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson was in power. That was the late 1960s, a period of punishing taxes that inspired Ray Davies of The Kinks to open his song Sunny Afternoon with the line “The tax man’s taken all my dough”.