Ending taxpayer funded lobbying
"Taxpayer Funded Lobbying and Political Campaigning"(PDF)
Author: Matthew Sinclair
Publication date: August 2009
This report exposes the £37million of taxpayers' money which was spent on funding lobbying and political campaigning in 2007-8. This amount is spent by both national and local government and think tanks and public affairs companies have been among the beneficiaries. Whilst this is an unnecessary waste of taxpayers' money, the author also criticises the fact that people are being forced to pay for views they may seriously disagree with. The report also claims that this money is designed to distort decision making in favour of the interests and ideological pre-occupations of a narrow elite. A future Conservative Government has pledged to scrap this funding and in the eyes of the author of this report such a move can't come soon enough.
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