Michael Meacher MP

The release of the COINS (Combined Online Information Systems) data yesterday on the range of Government spending is a major step forward.   It will expose many dark corners in Whitehall, make the Government far more accountable, and allow taxpayers far more knowledge of exactly how £650bn of their money is spent and whether it is justified.   Even first glances open up some quite crucial policy questions:

*  It cannot be right to spend £24bn a year on tax credits when this is largely a huge disguised subsidy to employers paying below-poverty wages to millions of people on very low earnings.   Obviously the right policy (at vastly less cost in taxes) is a big uplift in the mandatory minimum wage.

*  Equally £1.8bn spent on consultants (20% up on the previous year), including £600 million spent out of the NHS budget on management consultants, must be grossly out of scale for genuine value for money.

*  The Government has also apparently incurred bad debts of some £600 millions a year, a high proportion of which should surely be recoverable.

*  Another finding that sticks out like a sore thumb is that DECC last year spent more than half its £3bn a year budget on dealing with nuclear waste – a huge annual sum that the nuclear industry should be forced to pay themselves, and which should be the clinching argument why any further nuclear build cannot be afforded.

So, bully for the coalition.    Yet lots is still not revealed. (more…)