Lobbyists and political campaigners seeking public policy changes have received a staggering £49,011,318 courtesy of the taxpayer since 2018, new research from the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) has revealed. According to their latest paper, 26 organisations have received public cash over the last four years, with nearly £7.7 million even going to groups actively fighting the government over its Rwandan resettlement scheme, including Stonewall, Refugee Action, Hope Not Hate and Instalaw. Stonewall received a cool £593,166, while InstaLaw also gratefully accepted a bumper paycheque despite issuing judicial review proceedings against the Home Office…

The Department of Health and Social Care dipped into the public purse the most, splashing out over £30 million to just five organisations, including to the NHS Confederation – which spent months campaigning for continued facemask use even after the legal mandate was lifted. Meanwhile over at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, groups including Age UK and Gendered Intelligence also raked in the dough, with the former campaigning on the pension triple lock, and the latter urging the government to allow under-16s to consent to bodily medical treatments. TPA Chief Executive John O’Connell said:

“Taxpayers have had enough of governments giving grants to organisations who lecture and lobby. The public purse should not be paying out to pressure groups who are in turn using that cash to push for policy changes. Ministers must put a stop to this needless merry-go-round, and instead focus funding on taxpayers’ priorities.”

Most campaigns focusing on public policy survive entirely by private donations. There’s no reason why these groups should be any different. £55 million paid by the government to lobbyists who use it to lobby against the government, all while the UK’s tax burden is at its highest in decades…