Mark Wallace of the TaxPayers' Alliance congratulates Windsor and Maidenhead Council on fulfilling its decision to publish the details of all expenditure over £500.
I wrote here a few weeks ago about the decision of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead to become Britain’s first transparent council. I am delighted to report that this week, they implemented that policy – publishing a full list of all expenditure over £500 which can be viewed here.
This is a major development in the relationship between the people and the State, and particularly between taxpayers and their local councils. Transparency is essential to a functional democracy, and it is particularly essential to achieving a low tax, localised democracy, which the TaxPayers’ Alliance would very much like to see.
This gold standard of disclosure has several benefits to taxpayers, to the council and to local democracy in general.
The public clearly benefit by the new power they gain to identify wasteful spending and hold the council to account. If the default position for all public spending was that it would be made public, then large amounts of the absurd, self-indulgent and outright bizarre spending that goes on would never get off the ground, and that which did continue would swiftly be stamped out by public demand. This new gold standard of disclosure also sweeps away the advantage that opacity gives to councillors or officers over taxpayers and voters, too. No longer does one party come to the table armed with all the information on a given issue, while the other is kept in the dark.
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