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LabourList readers: scrap personal privacy over your income

14 January 2012 , ,

LabourList has been running a series of posts based on a good idea – asking people to propose policy ideas that don’t cost money, under the banner ‘What’s Labour about when there’s no money left?’.

I was, ahem, a bit underwhelmed then to read one of the ideas – to strip away personal privacy from everyone and publish all income tax returns in full. Somewhat surprised, too, to find that former Labour MP, and when I’ve come across him in the past good egg, Alf Dubs was proposing the idea - his argument being that publishing figures in full would cut tax evasion and avoidance.

But even more surprised to find that it won the poll amongst LabourList readers* as the best idea. Ahead even of encouraging more people to join trade unions.

So what is Labour when there’s no money left? Carrying on with disregard for people’s personal rights, much as it was under New Labour, it would seem. Privacy? No decent person deserves it in such Labour eyes. Some things haven’t changed.

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Agnes MacBeth
Agnes MacBeth

Actually, I quite *like* this idea. Don't some Scandinavian countries already do this?

Haydn Latham
Haydn Latham

Bosses no lingers giving unskilled workers they like extra pay, above skilled eorkers, girls and foreigners getting the same wages, an end to lies assumptions and misinformation in child support, I'd go for this wholeheartedly but with one caveat - total pensions and benefits transparency too so we can compare like with like...at the moment youngsters in manual work are being told their retirement will be far later...now if they only knew the full package of pensions some folk who retired in their 50s are on from the government I think there would be a revolution

Mark Pack
Mark Pack

Norway does, and it is controversial there for the privacy reasons.

Chris Usher
Chris Usher

public sector workers don't have privacy over there income - our pay scales are on the internet, so for a few million people its not a mater of privacy although I wouldn't rate it that highly as a helpful idea, as the really rich people will have undisclosable income anyway, although tax ratio might be helpful (ask tony blair - I beleve he paid £300k out of 12 million income.

Mark Pack
Mark Pack

Two things to bear in mind about such public sector workers - (a) they are relatively small in number compared to who this proposal would cover, so it's a big change, and (b) you have to know quite a lot about someone's job to be able work out their pay from the public pay scales. E.g. I know you are in the NHS and on one of the payscales, but no idea where on the scale you are - and it would take quite a lot of effort for me to try to work out a good guess :)

C-