"consulted the individuals, groups and families most likely to be affected by the Act".70 Thus, emerges a fourth requirement in the design of tax policies : it is that they are subject to effective democratic control. Strengthening participation, transparency and accountability in budgetary decision-making is a way to ensure that budgetary priorities shall take into account the interests of the most marginalized groups within society. The point barely requires elaboration : economic marginalization (the deprivation of social and economic rights) typically is paired with political disempowerment (in violation of civil and political rights, in particular the right to take part in the conduct of public affairs), leading to a vicious cycle in which because the poor are unable to influence political processes, the policies shall serve the elites rather than respond to their needs.71 Strengthening the participation of the poor in shaping policies can help to break this cycle, leading in turn to the adoption of policies that will be more attentive to their needs.72 It shall also strengthen the negotiating position of departments dealing with health, education or social welfare, whose demands frequently compete with those from departments concerned with law and order -- the Interior, National Defence or Justice --, particularly in relatively weakly governed countries in which controlling the population and law enforcement are seen are major challenges on which the very stability of the government may depend : if civil society are involved in defining the budgetary priorities, it is likely 70 See the Allegation Letter addressed to the United Kingdom by the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, the Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, and the Special Rapporteur on the right to food (ref. AL GBR 1/2016, 8 April 2016). See in particular questions 5 ("What evidence is available to demonstrate that the Employment Support Allowance for persons in the WRAG [Work Related Activity Group : people deemed unfit to work as result of health problems or a disability] has created a disincentive for them to take steps towards work? Further, what evidence is available to demonstrate that they would be incentivised to move towards work by reducing the Employment Support Allowance, in view of the fact that they have been assessed not fit for work?"), 7 ("What evidence is available to establish that your Excellency's Government has considered alternative options to the benefit cut, in the context of the full use of maximum available resources?"), 12 ("Please indicate whether there has been an independent reveiw and assessment of the Act and if so, provide details. Please also indicate whether the human rights of persons likley to be subject to the benefit cut have been considered in the review / assessment and what the findings were."), and 13 ("Could you please indicate what mechanism will be available to monitor negative effects of the Act?"). The response of the United Kingdom was sent on 14 July 2016 (Verbal Note of the UK Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, No. 231). On these procedural dimensions, it states simply : "As per the usual Parliamentary process, the Public Bill Committee took 6 oral evidence sessions with a range of stakeholders representing interest groups, which are recorded in the parliamentary record. Furthermore, an open call for evidence was held with 86 pieces of evidence submitted and considered over the course of 8 months of Parliamentary scrutiny and 26 Parliamentary sessions". The scantiness of the response on the procedural questions raised is perhaps a good measure of how subversive these questions are. 71 See Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, to the 29th session of the Human Rights Council (A/HRC/29/31) (26 May 2015), para. 21 (citing Combating Poverty and Inequality: Structural Change, Social Policy and Politics (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.10.III.Y.1), p. 6) ("Economic inequalities seem to encourage political capture and the unequal realization of civil and political rights. High levels of economic inequalities 'may create institutions that maintain the political, economic and social privileges of the elite and lock the poor into poverty traps from which it is difficult to escape'"). For instance, the governing elites may veto tax reforms that would lead to a more progressive system of taxation, and they may undermine efforts at combating the practices of tax evasion that they, more than the average citizen, may be able to rely on : see Ana Corbacho, Vicente Frebes Cibils and Eduardo Lora (eds), More than Revenue: Taxation as a development tool (Inter-American Development Bank and Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), at 3 ("One of the rent-seeking mechanisms that the most affluent have imposed on the rest of society is the regressive design of the tax structure. Opportunities to evade taxes that vary greatly across income groups compound this perverse structure, shrinking the effective tax bases and resulting in low levels of revenue"). 72 See, e.g., World Health Organization, World Health Report 2010: Health Systems Financing: the path to universal coverage (World Health Organization, Geneva, 2011), at 25 ("Dealing with universal health coverage also means dealing with the poor and the marginalized, people who are often politically disenfranchised and lack representation. This is why making health a key political issue is so important and why civil society, joined by eminent champions of universal coverage, can help persuade politicians to move health financing for universal coverage to the top of the political agenda"). For a powerful empirical study relating the diffusion of power in society (i.e., its degree of democratization) with the adoption of pro-poor policies, see Mwangi S. Kimenyi, "Economic Rights, Human Development Effort, and Institutions", in Hertel and Minkler (eds), Economic Rights. Conceptual, Measurement, and Policy Issues (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007) 182-213, as well as the previous effort of this scholar finding a statistical correlation between indicators of power diffusion and progress along the Human Development Index : Mwangi S. Kimenyi, Institutions of Governance, Power Diffusion and Pro-Poor Growth and Policies (African Economic Research Consortium, 2005). 19 CRIDHO Working Paper 2017/1