QUANGO STATE ARTICLES - INCOMING ALERT

The Daily Mail is trailing today a forthcoming TaxPayers' Alliance report on the Quango State claiming a seven fold growth in costs since New Labour came to power.

So the headline figures are:

• Cost of quangos in 1997 = £24 billion
• Cost of quangos in 2009 = £170 billion
• Number of quango staff = 1.5 million
• Number of quangos = 994

Respondint to the article a Cabinet Office spokesman has reported figures for 2007/8 claiming a fall from 857 to 790 -

From what I read of public bodies some of these, such as our hardy perennial favourite and proud sponsor of National Chip Week the British Potato Council are concealed within the Russian doll for levy bodies that is the fantabulous Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board

There's a judgmental looking Daily Mail cut out and keep name and shame (you couldn't make it up guv) graphic above.

Quangos are the low hanging fruit for the state cull. Lack of accountability, overly protected (a freedom from deathblows that would make a Sam Rami zombie howl with rage) and an elect Quangocracy of state client patsies pulling in above board salaries for distributing unaffordable largesse.

A happy Pinaata Donkey to be festively bashed with impunity and self-righteous zeal. I think we understand the story.

However, there is a need for balance and a need to protect some useful state babies from bathwater oblivion. Some NDPBs have great track records in performing vital and useful services and functions of state at safe distance from the dead hand of central government control.

The spiralling education and health splurge all derived from No 10 having too much baleful control over schools 'n' hospitals to the detriment of local accountability and choice.

Many NDPS (not quangos, note) as we call them exist for perfectly valid sound reasons - we might go all 'elf and safety and political correctness gawn mad, but the Health and Safety Executive do a good job and as an organisation are by and large certainly fit for purpose.

Pernicious culture or otherwise, the legislation and fundamental principals behind HSE/HSC are sound. If matters offend common sense we have a duty to respond as individuals possessed of robust courage in the context of our community and a wider society and stand up against folly or simply plain ignore as the French do rather than whine and whinge as law abiding doormat victims.

If the budgets of local authorities - including councils, police and education
bodies - are included, the cost will soar to £300billion.

But please let's get it into perspective. Local government budgets are £130 billion. Unlike Central Government they have made real efficiencies of 10 % in the last three years. But given their responsibilities is it surprising they spend £130 billion? What so, how interesting? should be a natural response to a simple statement of accounts.


So if there is to be a final judgment day, a Rapture moment for the Quangos so be it and not before time. By all means let's make sure we separate the wheat from the chaff and that it's done with speed, decisiveness and elan.

But for the rest, let's have a 'What so, how very interesting?" attitude.

Robert Chote from the IFS writes in The Times about the scale of the black hole from yesterday's leaked Treasury public spending forecasts. It makes for essential reading.

"They suggest a tougher outlook than at any time since the last Labour
Government was negotiating its spending plans with the IMF in the late 1970s."

Pressing further he lays it bare. It's dispiriting. But then again, as with dismantling the stubbornly rickety Quango state, knocking over a rotting door that's barely on its hinges isn't much sport - satisfying though the respite might be!

The officially published Budget forecasts showed total public
spending broadly flat in real terms on average over the three years of the next
spending review: 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14. But the leaked documents show
that over the same period the Treasury expects debt interest payments to rise by
11.1 per cent a year, social security costs by 1.4 per cent a year and other
“annually managed expenditure” (such as public sector pension payments and
contributions to the EU) by 3.1 per cent a year.
If you take these increases out of the flat profile for total spending, you are left with “departmental expenditure limits” — broadly speaking, what Whitehall has to spend on public services and administration — falling by 2.9 per cent a year in real terms or 8.6 per cent in total after three years. (Our best guess until yesterday had
been cuts of 2.3 per cent a year or 6.7 per cent in total: gratifyingly close, but not quite pessimistic enough.) This comes on top of a 0.8 per cent cut during the forthcoming financial year that the Budget was upfront about.

In essence we are returning full circle but in a crazily expensive and wasteful manner.

"The figures will make grim reading for Labour loyalists. They imply that by 2013-14 three quarters of the increase in spending on public services as a share of potential national income that Labour achieved during the years of plenty would be reversed. If even half the remaining tightening were to take the form of spending cuts, that would reverse the rest."

The necessary spending cuts, tax rises and reductions in rising welfare will nullify all the billions thrown at the public sector in the decade of neglectful largesse