Matthew Sinclair: Coalition's promising start but a lot more to do

At the TaxPayers' Alliance, we released a manifesto during the election campaign against which we pledged to judge any new government. It set out a large number of proposals we felt would mean better value for taxpayers, reformed services to improve standards and strengthened democracy and transparency. When we produced that document, we divided the proposals up into those where we wanted to see action within three months, a year and over five years. Now we can see how they've done against the objectives for the first three months.

There has definitely been some really important progress, particularly on necessary spending cuts.

We recommended that the Government halve wasteful advertising spending. The Central Office of Information recently announced that in June total central Government spending on advertising and marketing was down 52 per cent on the same period last year. A number of unnecessary quangos are being scrapped like the Sustainable Development Commission, the Standards Board for England and the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA). Grants to Muslim community groups through local authorities, which weren't properly controlled and made different communities feel stigmatised or ignored, have been scrapped. Eric Pickles, Communities and Local Government Secretary, announced that his department was going to stop councils and their quangos using our money to hire lobbyists.

There will be a necessary two-year public sector pay freeze. While that will be tough for many workers, it is only fair as those in the private sector have borne the brunt of the recession. It is also less than that planned in some other European countries.

We've also had great news on some other reforms. It does look like democratic accountability for the police is on the way, so they will answer to local people instead of Whitehall. Groups of parents and teachers are getting rightly excited about the new schools they can now set up. We now know more than we ever have before about how our money is spent thanks to transparency, which is set to be extended further in the months to come with more information on the contracts that the Government has been entering into.

But it isn't all good news. There are a number of areas where the Government has been letting us down.

There is still plenty of wasteful spending to cut. The trade unions, preparing strikes that will cause huge disruption to public services, are still getting millions of pounds in funding at our expense. Regional Development Agencies are being abolished but the Local Enterprise Partnerships being lined up to replace them may mean money continues to be wasted, taking money from business in taxes and then giving it back to some in grants. They have ring-fenced international development spending. Just a one-year freeze would save 862m, which is surely fair enough with cuts at home.

They haven't taken the big or the little steps that are needed to improve the way Britain works with the EU. We might actually get better scrutiny of new EU legislation, but not really thanks to anything the Government has done but because the highly respected MP Bill Cash has been elected to head the EU Scrutiny committee. There have been no moves to give us a referendum on a more fundamental renegotiation of our relationship with the EU.

Coalition Ministers are also still introducing new, expensive policies that purport to address the threat of climate change. They are pushing for tougher targets despite a warning from Citigroup Investment Research that energy bills are already set to double by 2020, mostly thanks to the huge new investments being required in inefficient renewable energy.

Finally, and most importantly, the Government hasn't moved to start reducing the burden that taxes impose on families and businesses. During the election, the Conservatives promised to scrap inheritance tax and said they had no plans to raise VAT. After the election we saw that VAT is to increase to 20 per cent and nothing on inheritance tax. Of course, the room for manoeuvre is limited with the public finances in a crisis but that crisis is built on a decade of tax rises not cuts. Huge growth in spending is the problem and spending cuts are the answer.

It has all been very mixed. Taxpayers are enjoying greater transparency

and value for money as a result of some of the concrete steps that have been taken. But in other areas it has been disappointing to see little progress made.

Some Ministers have distinguished themselves so far, Eric Pickles in particular. Others, like Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, are still looking to impose new burdens on families and businesses. We are very encouraged by what we've seen so far. But there is still a lot of work to do if the coalition is to really deliver the better value that hard-pressed taxpayers deserve.

Matthew Sinclair is research director of the TaxPayers' Alliance.