One way to slim down the quangocracy

pete

Way to privatize the country! Turn the services into quangoes so they are no longer beholden to the electorate, then dump the Q and hey presto..

Just as worrying to my teeny little mind is the way regional assemblies fell through the cracks wrt FOI requests...

Catinthehat

£5,956,56 digit missing

e.g.

The British Potato Council quite often comes in for stick when quango bashing. It does have a useful purpose in that it reports market conditions and prices (spot prices, by region, variety etc and estimates national stocks and planting.) Potato growers and merchants pay a levy to help fund it. I can't see why it has to be a quango though, a commercial company could do the same thing.

David Blackburn

pete,

I agree regarding regional assemblies, though I think that Grant Shapps' idea that they need to be abolished http://www.welwynhatfieldconservatives.com/index.php?sectionid=3&pagenumber=429 is sound.

Regarding the regulation of health practioners, of course the state must have a role, and Cameron is correct to desire to improve accountibility. But that alone is not going to decrease the outlays that the taxpayer makes. Who better to regulate the medical profession than a medical body that makes a profit - through subscription and licence fees - but which is answerable to the law, parliament and the Department of Health, without the taxpayer having to lift a finger?

William Blake's Ghost

What happens to them if they go bankrupt?

It seems to me if we can afford a QUANGO function to go bust then we don't really need it.

David Blackburn

Catinthehat,

Thanks.

Emil

Harsh, Dame Suzi's got to eat you know.

John Page

Withdraw all taxpayer funding from fake charities; if other funders want to step into the breach, let them.

A recent CPS paper identified savings of £633m from abolishing educational quangos.

Unlike some shadow ministers, we can be confident that Michael Gove will have read and noted the contents of a paper relevant to his brief.

Rather than looking for ways to save quangos, what about the process for getting rid of them?

The Tories should already have not a little list, but a long one.

And they'll none of them be missed.

That's a WRAP.

Dave B

I like the idea of Quangos having to apply to parliament for their budgets every year.

That way you get democratic oversight, and if a Quango no longer serves a useful purpose, it ceases to exist.

Stephen

I used to do some work for the PMETB, which was only established because Mr Milburn hated the medical royal colleges, and was totally unnecessary. In my experience it added no value and I am delighted to hear that someone who knows what they are doing is taking it over. Its functions are not necessary! And this should be the criterion.

My prime candidate is the Standards Board for England, which has almost nothing to do, has fancy offices (at least they're in Manchester not W1) and was again a reaction to one particular 'issue' on which it would have been much more sensible for the Govt to do absolutely nothing. But doing nothing seems to be deeply unfashionable!

mac

Emil,

Indeed, without the quangocracy what's an impartial career quangocrat (and, entirely incidentally, of course, Labour Party member) like Dame Suzi to do? How will she be able to add to her tote of 30 public sector appointments? Or will it be a Brown-job peerage before the GE for loyally 'doing the right thing'?

Jeremy

I am under the impression that quangos exist in order to provide the governing party of the day with a way to pay off its political friends for work and/or favours done - i.e. if a person has worked hard for, or performed some significant service to, a political party they are subsequently reimbursed by being appointed to sit on a quango and take the salary that goes with it.

In other words, what quangos actually do is completely beside the point.

Or am I wrong about this?

Jon Rosenberg

Consider Corgi, the now abolished regulator for gas engineers. They charged the individual members an exorbitant fee and did very little to earn that money. However the have now been taken over by another organisation who have upped the fees even more, brought in stupid and wasteful bureaucratic measures, dumbed down the actual training and requirements needed to be a gasman and made it all but impossible for the sole trader to function. They're an "ango" and one which merely exists to ensure that the large firms in gas fitting and repair can work to poor standards, with daft regulatations, while freezing out the independent traders.

Owen Morgan

Jeremy (August 16th, 2009 8:56 pm), that's part of the point of them, without a doubt, a way for labour to lose an election and still be entrenched. Quangos are also there, though, to help ministers out of sticky situations. Establishing a new quango is labour's favoured way of being seen to "do something". The labour government has had recourse to this tactic so often that newly created quangos frequently duplicate the (nominal) functions of others that already exist. A quango can also assist an embattled minister by being made the scapegoat for the department's latest cock-up. This is the way Ed Balls invariably responds to criticism of his department's lamentable failings.

Verity

What a fatuous little face Cameron has! Even though they took the shot in low key to try to give him more defintion, he looks weak, weak, weak ...

Trumpeter Lanfried

Every quango has built into it an HRDM (Hysterial Reaction Defence Mechanism) which is activated as soon as anyone suggests that its activities (or worse, its budget!) might be curtailed.

Suppose, for example, that the Tories, in government, proposed the abolition of the British Potato Council. Within 48 hours:

(a) Potato denialists would be grilled by Sarah Montague on the Today programme;

(b) A letter of anquished protest, signed by 365 potato growers, 12 privy councillors, 17 bishops and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland would be splashed across the front page of The Independent.

(c) Labour would accuse the Tories of snatching potatoes from the shopping baskets of hard-working families, hinting at a return to the Great Potato Famines of 1846.

In these situations, rational discussion is pointless. The offending quango must be abolished in a single stroke, overnight. The flack will die down after a week or so.

In fact, its probably best to abolish quangos in batches of 20 or 30. No point in prolonging the agony.

drakes drum

We elect governments to govern. Quango's are created to take the flack away from Ministers.

No quango should be allowed to 'make rules' which affect anyone. That is why I say we should Scrap ALL quango's, restore the civil service to the standard they had, prior to Blair,(possibly by recruiting civil servants from India- who work hard, work for the country and their english is better than our scholars are taught!)- to achieve a civil service second to none.

Quango's serve no useful purpose whatsoever, save to 'protect' politicians.

IF there is any need for a Quango those who wish to serve on it MUST be elected by the local people. In the case of Dame Suzi and her Charities Commission, that should become a branch of a government department under a specific government minister. The Dame Suzi should be publicly sacked.

Rhoda Klapp

I don't like your ango suggestion. This is what is known elsewhere as a SEFRA, a self-funded regulatory agency. They make their money from licensing, or charging for inspection. They usually have the benfit of monopoly, and monopoly is the way they can make the charges higher and use a raft of regulations to drive out the small players while getting in bed with the big ones. As Jon Rosenberg describes with Corgi. And iof course the SEFRAs and the industry get together as an influence on the EU to introduce more and more intrusive regulation in order to slice up the market and destroy competition. The effect is to raise prices and stifle enterprise. This is not a good thing. The way to deal with quangos/sefras is to abolish them all and see what happens.

And to the first person to reply here and say 'but surely we couldn't do without OFFXYZ?'. I'd say, yes we can.

A couple of years back, we had our kitchen renewed. We took all those things that accumulate in there, all those indispensible gadgets, and put them in the garage. We decided we wouldn't bring them back, but fetch each one as it was needed. 90% of them are still out there, seven years later. I suggest the same approach with quangos.

Ben K

Do you mean the British Medical Association (BMA) or the General Medical Council (GMC)?

Verity

Drake's Drum - Yes, all quangoes should be shut down and made a little department, down the corridor, of the ministry they serve.

Sadly, you wouldn't be able to get Indians working in the Home Office, where they would excel, given their standard of English and intelligence, because they've already got it stuffed with Nigerians. Why? With so many English people, who understand the mores of the country out of work?

Hysteria

Verity - your posts are much better when they stick to matters of principle and fact - disliking someone on appearance is not terribly constructive.

I reckon.....

Verity

Hysteria, I would have thought it impossible to have a face so unetched by character by the time one reached one's mid-forties. I think it is a valid point.

Alexander

The GMC is a monopoly and a very inefficient one at that. It will always be bailed out by government who will always appoint its board. You are kidding yourself if you think that that this will make it more efficient or responsive. Its complete monopoly makes it immune from market forces.

Niall

I read recently that the Romanian government has cut quangos by half.

David Ossitt

Hysteria

"disliking someone on appearance is not terribly constructive."

I have spent a lifetime in sales and since my early twenties in management.

To be successful one has to fully know and understand your product; be observant, have the ability to read and be sensitive to body language, and to be a bit of a psychologist.

The first impression that your client has of you; is almost as important as the first impression you have of him or her.

You will never sell to someone who does not like the look of you; but you can, more often than not, be absolutely sure from your first impression of the client, whether you will or will not make the sale.

And so I will always trust my instinct and thus ensure that disliking someone on first appearance; will always be extremely constructive.

David Ossitt

Please tell; why are there no posts since Monday 9.26pm?

I have sent at least two.

David Blackburn

David Ossitt,

Sorry, your posts were lost in the system. But I've recovered them and they should appear shortly.