A new report released today by the Tax Payer’s Alliance (TPA) in the United Kingdom has revealed that £1 in every £6 spent by government is “wasted,” according to the pressure group.
The figures, which will come as no surprise to big government skeptics, mean that in total for the year 2012/13, the British government squanders £120.4bn ($197.3bn) of taxpayer money: the equivalent of £4,560 ($7,473) per UK household.
The Tax Payers’ Alliance argues in its new report, the Bumper Book of Government Waste (BBGW), that the profligacy and wastefulness of the British government creates an amount greater than that of the UK’s deficit, and even that of New Zealand’s entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The TPA report highlights scores of ways in which the British government has lavished away money, including £20.6bn on fraud within the public sector, £22.5bn on the overpayment of public sector pensions, and at the smaller end of the scale, £70 on a bunny outfit, bought by the Forestry Commission.
Some of the expenditure is astounding, such as the Welsh Government’s £33,333 outlay on plant pots, and £527,000 on spare parts for an anti-aircraft missile system… that were subsequently lost.
Jonathan Isaby, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “We need a War on Waste if taxpayers are to secure a better deal from the endless layers of government which are spending their hard-earned money.
“Politicians and bureaucrats are still squandering our cash while families struggle with punishing levels of taxation. Rooting out that wasteful spending once and for all will mean that more money can be left in the pockets of taxpayers, who are by far the best judges of how their own money should be spent.”
The TPA’s War on Waste initiative pointed to the fact that the value of savings could be spent on a trip to the Rio World Cup for every British taxpayer. The full, 39-page report, can be read here.
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