Nigel Evans' tax transparency initiative - which Tim and Sam have blogged about on ToryDiary - reminds me of an episode which Lee Rotherham and I wrote about in our first Bumper Book of Government Waste.
In 1974, Prime Minister Harold Wilson sent a memo to his ministers saying, “In the coming weeks, I want to show that as a government we are sensitive to little points which may be trivial in the context of government policy but carry a disproportionate weight in people's minds."
Among the “little points" was tax and, in particular, openness with taxpayers on how revenues were being spent. Wilson wrote to his Chancellor, Denis Healey, suggesting that taxpayers should be given a diagram showing how taxes were used. “One of the complaints which I often hear from constituents and others is that in contrast to the local rates, no one ever bothers to tell them how their taxes are spent."
He added: “I find it hard to believe that the job of putting this extra slip of paper into each envelope would bring the Inland Revenue machine to a halt." Thirty years later, we are still waiting.
