PWYP UK letter to British Chancellor George Osborne (5 December 2011)

On 5 December 2011 PWYP UK wrote to the British Chancellor George Osborne with comments and suggestions aimed to strengthen the EU proposals for amendments to the Transparency & Accounting Directive. You can view this letter in its original PDF format

Dear Chancellor

Publish What You Pay welcomes publication of the European Commission’s new draft legislation on extractive sector transparency in the form the proposed new Accounting and Transparency Directives.

We greatly appreciate the leadership that you personally and the UK Government more broadly have shown in championing the principle of extractive sector revenue transparency and in securing a positive outcome from the European Commission’s initial drafting process. Your public support in February was instrumental in convincing the Commission to act, and the UK now has a crucial role to play in championing a final outcome which will deliver for the world’s poorest people.

We have a number of comments and suggestions regarding how the proposals can be strengthened as they are considered by the European Council, and we would like to share these points with you now in the attached summary of our views on the current legislative drafts. We believe the proposals represent a solid foundation on which to build – any watering down would have a huge detrimental impact on the final legislation’s effectiveness.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions. We would welcome an opportunity to discuss these points with you in more detail. Please would your office contact the Consultant to the Publish What You Pay UK Coalition, Miles Litvinoff (mlitvinoff@pwypuk.org, 020 8965 9682, 07984 720103), in the first instance, and members of the coalition would be pleased to meet with you.

Yours sincerely

Loretta Minghella
Director
Christian Aid

Gavin Hayman
Director of Campaigns
Global Witness

Paul Cook
Advocacy Director
Tearfund

Vanessa Herringshaw
Director, London
Revenue Watch Institute

Jamie Drummond
Executive Director
ONE

Neil Thorns
Director of Advocacy
CAFOD

enc/attached: PWYP briefing: The European Commission’s proposals on extractive sector transparency: a civil society view

cc The Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell MP, Secretary of State for International Development

cc Ed Davey MP, Minister for Employment Relations, Consumer and Postal Affairs

cc David Gauke MP, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury