Andrew Turner, the Island’s MP has called for measures in the Sustainable Communities Act to be implemented in full, to demonstrate how much public money in total is being spent on the Isle of Wight and in other areas across the country. Section 6 of the Act (which became law in 2007) requires the Government to publish detailed information in the form of Local Spending Reviews on all spending by local and central Government bodies. The Act also allows for funding to be devolved to a local level and after consultation gives power for spending to be focused on the priorities of local people. However in a consultation document slipped out at the end of October the requirement to publish local information was watered down to include only information such as local authority and health spending which is already in the public domain. The spending of central government, its departments and agencies has been excluded from the measures and Ministers have said that they will only develop the scope of Local Spending Reports ‘over time’.

Under the new proposals the spending by 1,152 Quangos (short for quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations) is to be completely excluded from the reports. Recent research by the Taxpayers’ Alliance shows that in 2007/08 such bodies were responsible for spending £90 billion of taxpayers’ money.

The Sustainable Communities Act was introduced by a Conservative MP in 2007 with support from all political parties and with wide community support from local and national organisations. The Conservative Party have pledged to use the Act to publish detailed Local Spending Reports including spending by central government and quangos, and also to devolve more money to the control of local communities. They will also require local councils to publish online figures for all expenditure on goods and services over £500, a measure already being piloted by Windsor and Maidenhead Council.

Mr Turner said :
“The Sustainable Communities Act received cross-party and wide community support and many Islanders wrote to tell me about their support for the proposals. It is not good enough now for these measures to be watered down. The Government should open the books so that the public can see properly how their money is being spent. We need to see that money is being distributed fairly, if we do not the suspicion must be that some areas are not getting a fair deal.

“The amounts being spent by unelected quangos alone represent over £3,500 per Island household. These bodies make decisions that profoundly affect the lives of Islanders, yet they have no democratic mandate or accountability. If we don’t like their decisions we cannot vote them out.

“We also need to sweep away the regional layer of government that has crept in – the massively expensive regional development agencies (RDAs) and regional assemblies. In recent years the salary bill for the RDAs alone has trebled from £38 million to over £120 million and their running costs have spiralled by 159% to £202 million.

END Contact : Andrew Turner’s office 01983 530808

Further information :

DCLG, Sustainable Communities Act 2007: Consultation on developing local spending reports - Summary of responses, 27 October 2009.
http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/localgovernment/localspendingreportsresponses

Research by Taxpayers’ Alliance
http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/bettergovernment/2009/10/new-research-the-taxpayers-alliance-comprehensive-and-accurate-guide-to-the-semiautonomous-public-bo.html