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Anti-strike law: Major protest planned by unions to defend the right to strike

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has organised an emergency protest on Monday 22nd May for 6.00pm outside Parliament Square, as it fights to protect the right to strike which is under attack from the Tory government.

Mick Lynch from the RMT, Matt Wrack from the FBU and Kevin Courtney will be speaking at the rally, with Unison, USDAW and the PCS union all showing their support.

The government’s strikes bill, which will empower employers to sue unions and sack staff in crucial sectors if minimum service levels aren’t maintained, has been slammed as an attack on the fundamental right to strike and as a draconian piece of legislation. The Bill essentially means that when workers lawfully vote to strike in health, education, fire, transport, border security and nuclear decommissioning, they could be forced to attend work – and sacked if they don’t comply.  

The TUC said in a press statement: “We can’t afford to lose the right to strike. But multi-millionaire Tory politicians are attacking our right to strike for better pay and fair treatment at work.

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Kwasi Kwarteng once more refuses to apologise for economic turmoil he caused

Former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has once more refused to apologise for his disastrous mini-budget which caused financial turmoil and which eventually led to him being sacked and Liz Truss being forced out of office.

Kwarteng, whose mini-budget resulted in chaos on the financial markets, the pound hitting an all-time low against the dollar and mortgage rates soaring, said he was ‘not in the business of forgiveness’.

“I’m not going to apologise,” he told Channel 4 News.

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Ann Widdecombe’s appalling advice to hungry families struggling with cost of living crisis is condemned

Former Tory MP and now Reform UK party member Ann Widdecombe has been widely condemned for her ‘out of touch’ and appalling comments on families struggling to make ends meet during the cost of living crisis.

Widdecombe was asked on BBC 2’s Politics Live programme about the cost of living crisis and what advice she would give to viewers who could not even afford the basics.

Jo Coburn asked the former Tory MP: “What do you say to those viewers who literally can’t afford to pay even for some of the basics – if they’ve gone up the way that cheese sandwich has, with all its ingredients?”

“Well, then you don’t do the cheese sandwich,” Widdecombe replied.

Her comments were immediately condemned by fellow panellist Rachel Cunliffe who said: “We’re talking about absolute basics and staples. We’re talking about own-brand pasta, we’re talking about bread, we’re talking about families who can’t afford to feed their children.

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Andy Burnham explains why Labour should back proportional representation

‘The First Past the Post system hands more power to the establishment than MPs or people.’

The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has set out the reasons for why the Labour Party should back a change to the voting system in favour of proportional representation (PR), despite party leader Keir Starmer saying that voting reform will not be a priority should Labour win power.

Although the Labour Party conference last year overwhelmingly backed a motion calling on the party to embrace a proportional electoral system, the leadership has made clear that it would not do as the motion says.

Since then, at the Progressive Britain conference last week, Starmer made clear that voting reform would not be among the priorities should Labour win power.

Burnham however has urged the party to adopt PR, saying that the current first-past-the-post voting system hands more power to the establishment than MPs or people and changing the system to proportional representation would mean “every vote would matter”.

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Green Party sets out 5 ways in which the Tories have undermined our democracy

Carla Denyer claims Greens are the strongest party on democratic reform

Carla Denyer, Cost of Living Crisis, Bristol, 2 April 2022

The Green Party has slammed the Tories for dragging democracy in the UK in a dangerous direction.

Speaking at an event last night, co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, Carla Denyer, laid out how the Tory’s have assaulted our democracy – and how the Greens would solve it.

Denyer discussed how to restore public faith in politics and argued that the Greens were the strongest party on democratic reform.

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The Greens have said they would apply proportional representation for all elections to all levels of government, along with bringing the voting age down to 16.

They would introduce devolution, mirroring systems in Europe by giving more power to local and regional government and Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Parliament. They would also introduce an elected upper house to replace hereditary power in the House of Lord and set up a Citizen’s Convention.

Introducing a fairer system of state funding for political parties, which would hope to eliminate the dependence of large private donations and strengthen transparency on political lobbying and donations. One in four people believe that party donors have the most influence on government decisions, according to Unlock Democracy.

Denyer also accused the media of preventing democratic conversations through its bias towards certain political parties.

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Revealed: UK’s most secretive think tanks took £14.3m from mystery donors

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openDemocracy has relaunched the Who Funds You? campaign into think tanks and transparency. Here’s what we found

Anita Mureithi

17 November 2022, 10.46am

Original article republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Image of loads of money

The UK’s most secretive think tanks have raised more than £14m from mystery donors in the past two years, new analysis by openDemocracy has found.

Among them are some of the most influential groups in UK politics. Think tanks often boast that they have driven changes to the law and economic policy, such as the tax cuts announced by Liz Truss that are blamed for tanking the UK economy earlier this year.

We have rebooted the formerly volunteer-run Who Funds You? campaign, which uses think tanks’ own income disclosures to position them on a funding transparency scale. The project originally ran for seven years before coming to an end in 2019.

Our analysis assigned a third of think tanks – nine out of 28 – an ‘E’ rating, the worst possible score. These organisations had a total income of at least £14.3m according to their most recent corporate filings, yet we found no, or negligible, relevant information made public about where most of this money comes from.

These notoriously ‘dark money’-funded organisations claim to have influence with the government – and often employ high-profile politicians.

Clifford Singer, the former director of Who Funds You?, said: “I’m so pleased that Who Funds You? is being relaunched on its tenth anniversary, and I can’t think of a better organisation than openDemocracy to take it forward.

“openDemocracy has consistently shone a light on the world of dark money and politics, and Who Funds You? is a perfect complement to openDemocracy’s excellent investigative work.”

Six of the least transparent think tanks – the Adam Smith Institute, the Centre for Policy Studies, Civitas, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Policy Exchange and the TaxPayers’ Alliance – also received an ‘E’ rating in 2019, meaning they have not made any significant improvements.

The three other think tanks that received the lowest transparency rating this year are the Centre for Social Justice, the Legatum Institute and ResPublica, all of which scored higher in 2019.

Singer told openDemocracy that it is “disappointing” to see think tanks lapse in their commitment to transparency.

“I’m sure the relaunch of Who Funds You? will prompt more improvements in transparency, while spotlighting those who remain intent on influencing public policy without declaring who funds them,” he said.

There is no legal requirement for think tanks to reveal their funders, but this lack of transparency is a major concern, say campaigners, especially for institutions that seek to affect government policy.

“Think tanks can play an important role informing policy in Westminster, yet opacity about their funding can raise suspicion that they’re peddling positions in favour of vested interests,” said Steve Goodrich, head of research and investigations at Transparency International UK.

At the other end of the spectrum, think tanks rated ‘A’ are highly transparent, naming all funders who gave them £5,000 or more in the past year and declaring the amounts given.

Ten think tanks (just over a third) received an ‘A’ rating, including the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the New Economics Foundation. The 2019 audit gave nine institutions an ‘A’ rating, including these two.

Polly Curtis, the chief executive of cross-party think tank Demos, which went from a ‘B’ to an ‘A’ this year, said: “Think tanks are an essential part of the democratic fabric of the UK… The values of openness and transparency are core to what Demos stands for, and I’m therefore delighted that our transparency rating has increased since the last audit.”

Less transparent

We found that four think tanks scored lower for transparency this year than in 2019. Among them is the Legatum Institute, a right-wing free-market advocate that has been described as the “Brexiteers’ favourite think tank”.

The Legatum Institute, the fourth largest think tank in our audit, dropped from a ‘C’ rating to an ‘E’. Think tanks are rated ‘C’ if they name at least 50% of funders who gave them £5,000 or more in the last reported year and group funders into specific bands by the amount given.

Despite its influential position, the Legatum Institute, which had an income of £4,175,671 in 2021, has provided no or very little clear information on its website about where donations come from.

But an investigation by openDemocracy in June found that the US fundraising arm of the institute, along with the US arm of the Adam Smith Institute, had between them received $350,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation. Led by a billionaire heir to an oil and banking fortune, the foundation has contributed millions to climate-sceptic organisations in the past decade.

Speaking to openDemocracy, journalist and campaigner George Monbiot said: “For many years, certain think tanks have populated the media, played a decisive role in our politics and changed the life of this nation. Yet we lack the crucial information required to see who they really are: namely, who funds them.”

Policy Exchange, for example, one of the UK’s most prominent conservative think tanks, doesn’t provide any clear information about the funders behind its income of £3,396,554 in 2021. Earlier this year, we revealed that the controversial anti-protest law targeting environmental activists, the UK’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, had been dreamed up by Policy Exchange – a think tank that had previously received $30,000 from US oil giant ExxonMobil.

A number of think tanks in the Who Funds You? audit have all steadily increased their influence at the heart of government over the past decade.

The Adam Smith Institute, IEA, Policy Exchange, the Legatum Institute and the TaxPayers’ Alliance have secured more than 100 meetings with ministers since 2012. All received ‘E’ ratings for transparency this year, and four did in the previous audit.

“Given the proximity of some of these organisations to those in high office, the public really should know who is backing them, for what and with how much money,” Goodrich from Transparency International UK told openDemocracy.

He added that think tanks failing to disclose clear information about their funding “gives the impression that they’ve got something to hide”.

Explore the 2022 data and download the full report at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/who-funds-you/

Original article republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/uk/

Continue ReadingRevealed: UK’s most secretive think tanks took £14.3m from mystery donors

2020 was worst year on record for UK government secrecy

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https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/freedom-of-information/2020-was-worst-year-on-record-for-uk-government-secrecy

openDemocracy has an exclusive report exposing the depth of the government’s attack on the Freedom of Information Act

Last year was the worst on record for government secrecy, new research by openDemocracy has revealed.

Just 41% of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests sent to government departments and agencies were granted in full in 2020, down from 43% the previous year.

This is the lowest figure since records began in 2005.

The findings are published in openDemocracy’s new report, ‘Access Denied’, which exposes the extent of the government’s attack on FOI.

It follows a major investigation by openDemocracy last year, which revealed how a secretive Cabinet Office unit called the ‘Clearing House’ vetted sensitive requests for information.

A judge subsequently criticised the government for a “profound lack of transparency” that might “extend to ministers”.

A parliamentary inquiry into the Clearing House – launched by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in the wake of openDemocracy’s revelations – opens this week.

The Access Denied report also finds that some government departments have far lower FOI disclosure rates than others, with the Cabinet Office among the worst offenders, along with the Foreign Office and the Department for International Trade.

Transparency campaigners say “urgent action is required” and that there needs to be a “sea change in attitudes towards FOI within Whitehall to avoid it spiralling it into an accountability black hole”.

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Continue Reading2020 was worst year on record for UK government secrecy