FTSE 4: WILL THEY HELP US TRACE THE TAX?
Christian Aid/Tim Bryan
COMPANY REPORTING – MAKE IT HAPPEN
IN 2007 CHRISTIAN AID research showed that UK-listed companies were responsible for 12-15 per cent of global carbon emissions. Fuelled with this information, more than 60,000 of you took action and together we campaigned for company reporting to be included in the Climate Change Act. The outcome of the campaign is that the environment secretary Caroline Spelman has to report to parliament by 1 December on whether reporting will be made mandatory. The Climate Change Act was a huge success and that was down to your campaigning. Take action at www.christianaid. org.uk/spelman
WASHING POWDER, mobile phones, package holidays and hotel rooms are not normally associated with fighting global poverty. But as products of four leading UK companies, there is a connection. s UNILEVER sells food and household products to 160 million people a day. s VODAFONE is a leading telecommunications company with 427 million subscribers. s TUI TRAVEL sells 30 million holidays a year (including Thomson and First Choice). s INTERCONTINENTAL HOTELS GROUP owns 4,400 hotels worldwide (including Holiday Inn). All four are in the FTSE 100 list of top UK companies with operations in many countries, including some of the poorest. As leading multinationals, these companies have the power to help us create a more just and transparent global tax system. At present, poor countries are thought to be losing more through tax dodging than they receive in aid. Christian Aid is not accusing these four companies of tax dodging. Nor are we asking them to change the way they do business as individual companies. We are simply calling on them to support publicly a new
international accounting standard which would require companies to report on their profits made and taxes paid in every country where they operate. This would up the pressure on the International Accounting Standards Board to introduce such a standard and make it easier for developing countries to detect tax dodging. Please help us persuade the FTSE 4 companies to back our campaign for greater tax transparency. Please send the enclosed postcards to the four companies. To order more postcards please call 0870 0787 788 quoting reference number F1924.. Better still, encourage your church or local group to join our local actions. For each of the four companies, we are promoting a different action: s UNILEVER: collect packaging from Unilever products that will be presented to the company s VODAFONE: text messaging s TUI TRAVEL: send holiday snaps and postcards to the company s IHG: local stunts outside Holiday Inns. More details of how to get involved with our local actions are available in our new Trace the Tax campaigners’ pack. To order these, and for more information, call 020 7523 2264 or email campaigns@christian-aid.org
20.10 2010: BE INSPIRED, BE ACTIVE, CREATE CHANGE Veteran civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson (left) is coming to speak to Christian Aid supporters at a special rally and lobby in Westminster on 20 October. Will you be there to Do Justice at the Gate? Campaigns officer Laura Trevelyan bristles with anticipation THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE and events that inspired me to become a campaigner but I will always remember the outrage I felt when I learnt of segregation in America and the respect I felt for the people who fought this injustice. Many people and places have stayed with me – Martin Luther King Jr, Little Rock, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Atlanta, the Reverend Jesse Jackson and all the nameless people who stood up and declared ‘we will overcome’. So imagine my excitement when Rev Jackson accepted Christian Aid’s
invitation to address supporters at our Do Justice at the Gate event in London on Wednesday 20 October 2010. There are very few chances we get to hear from the people who have inspired us (sadly, I will never meet a suffragette!), but on that day I and hundreds of other Christian Aid supporters will hear from Rev Jackson, our new director Loretta Minghella and partners from India and Zambia. We will then take our passion for a just world straight to our MPs as we lobby parliament calling on our representatives to tackle climate change
and tax dodging. At the same time we will also thank them for protecting the international aid budget. By speaking out, people have created change – segregation has ended, apartheid is gone and the Wall came down – but global poverty still remains. Join us as we refuse to be silent. Together we can change our world. To register for the day, call 020 7523 2264 or visit www.christianaid.org/ october. Many regions are arranging coaches to London. For details, contact your local Christian Aid office.
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