LONDON (Reuters) – David Cameron said yesterday the Conservatives would take a fresh approach to culling Britain’s 790 non-elected quangos that spend nearly 43 billion pounds a year, and singled out the media regulator Ofcom for particular attention.
“We are not doing the normal thing, which is a politician stands up and says: ‘Here’s the bonfire of quangos’. A great list is published, they get elected and nothing happens,” the Conservative leader told BBC television.
“What we’ve done is look at the arguments and thought through what is it that these bodies need to do, and what should be actually returned to government departments or abolished altogether.”
Quangos — quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations — employ more than 90,000 people and include such bodies as the Health Protection Agency, the Parole Board and the Environment Agency.
Operating outside direct government control, they aim to implement official policy in a more efficient manner by hiring specialist staff and working in a more commercial manner than the civil service. But they have become a favourite target for opposition politicians promising to cut spending and red tape.
Cameron said many quangos had a justifiable technical function, but in too many cases they had got too big.
“They start having their own communications department, their own press officers, they start making policy rather than just delivering policy, and their bosses are paid vast amounts of money.”
He said the average salary of the top 20 quango chiefs was 658,000 pounds a year.
He singled out media regulator Ofcom, which deals with such high-profile issues as broadcasting standards and media ownership, as one quango the Conservatives would slim down if they won the next election, due by June next year.
“There is a lot of money to be saved, but more to the point, we want to make these more democratically accountable, so people don’t feel the rage and anger against the machine they have no control over.”
Ofcom in response said it was in fact the result of five regulators merged into one and had delivered five consecutive years of real terms budget reductions and reduced headcount.
“Ofcom has always been very clear that we provide analysis and recommendations in line with our duties set by parliament but that outside specified areas, such as economic regulation and competition law, policy and decision-making is a matter for the government of the day,” it added.
The government at the weekend announced its own review of quangos, or non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs), as the civil service now prefers to call them. It published a list of 17 quangos it said the Conservatives would create if in power. Kevin Morgan, professor of governance and development at Cardiff University, said he welcomed the more judicious approach to reducing quangos proposed by Cameron.
“Quangos are not sperm of the devil, as one might infer from most political debate.
“There is a rationale (for quangos) and that rationale needs to be defended — it’s to recruit commercial or technical expertise and to provide some arm’s length relationship from government.”
Tony Travers of the London School of Economics, said culling quangos might improve the efficiency of government but would do little to help reduce public spending.
“What really costs money is the delivery of health, education and the benefits system. Cutting quangos would save pennies and ha’pennies in the great scheme of things.”
