Guido catching out TUC National Organiser Carl Roper and his misleading Pilgrim spinning has certainly upset the union cheerleaders today. Roper has gone AWOL, and as of yet the TUC have refused to comment.* It seems they unwilling to defend him…

Others are not staying so quiet though. The TaxPayers’ Alliance’s Matthew Sinclair confirms that Roper was wrong:

“The TUC undermine their own credibility with this shoddy and dishonest attack on our research. The careful and systematic TaxPayers’ Alliance investigation of trade union subsidies is an invaluable source providing a detailed picture of how unions are receiving subsidies across the public sector at the expense of taxpayers and frontline services. However because of organised attempts by the unions to frustrate that research, and the poor record keeping of many public bodies, we have always made it clear that the overall estimate that research provides will be much lower than the true figure. The new figures in the consultation document support that and suggest the true total could be much higher.”

Chairman of the Trade Union Reform Campaign Aidan Burley emails Guido to say:

“Just four days into the consultation and Carl Roper and his Union cronies are already reverting to misleading the public with false statistics – £36m is just the cost of Whitehall Pilgrims, not across the whole the public sector. TURC estimates the true cost nationally to be well over £100m, especially when free office rents and free collection of union dues are taken into account. Mr Roper should try to explain why his comrades need to immorally divert all this public money to fund their left-wing propaganda – which should be spent on nurses and teachers – rather than mislead the public with dodgy statistics that deliberately try to minimise the extent of their taxpayer-funded largess.”

 It’s going to be a very long consultation at this rate…

*Guido would happily have given the TUC a chance to respond. He is fascinated to see how they might spin this one.