Quangos and lazy ministers wreak havoc on our politics
- In 2022-23, quangos made up 29.6% of public sector spending
- It's time to to align political power with democratic accountability
- The quangocracy needs to be taken down by more than a few pegs
The Institute for Government was sceptical, to say the least, in its initial response to Pat McFadden’s bonfire of the quangos. As it stated, ‘the number of bodies is the wrong measure of success’, given that it is ‘an easy metric on which the media can focus’, but which can ‘create an illusion that major savings are being made when they aren’t’. The organisation added, ‘in previous purges, the government has not been good at eliminating functions’.
A familiar issue but the whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of the drift towards politically autonomous quangos where even a gesture towards democratic oversight is being lost.
This touches on a much broader issue with quangos. Is the problem that, once created, they become untameable beasts wreaking havoc on our body politic? Or are they an excuse for ministers to delegate powers and responsibility, with their successors ultimately paying the price when things go wrong? For all the recent criticism of the Office for Budget Responsibility and the way it calculates the cost of migration, it’s worth remembering that the OBR requires Treasury approval before it can start assessing the additional costs imposed by migration on things like public infrastructure and services.
Whichever view you take, though, the problem remains. If we want to align power with democratic accountability, the quangocracy needs to be taken down by more than a few pegs. Only we don’t need a bonfire of the quangos, we need to defang them.
2 comments:
If you were a Martian and looked at our politics with a distant perspective you might draw an unfavourable conclusion.
Quangos appear to be out of control in many cases.
Charities appear to attract government funding 'just because'.
Wealthy foreign billionaires quietly fund many politically based 'think tanks'.
Our 'first past the post' system worked well when there were only two main parties, but that is now broken.
The current government is failing to govern for all and seems to be open to non-democratic influences.
The legal systems appears increasingly partisan.
I think the Martian might conclude we have broken politics.
My guess is that 'proportional representation' will start being promoted by Labour and the Conservatives as a way of diluting the impact of the Reform vote in the next General Election. Still broken but some jobs protected.
DJ - I think that Martian would be right.
Yes 'proportional representation' could soon be wafting into the political arena as the legacy parties look around for some way to neuter the popularity of Reform. They probably know they could form a coalition easily enough if survival demands it.
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