Quangos

Questions over quango report, by David Walker

7 January 2011 | David Walker

The Commons Public Administration Select Committee has stuck it to the government and won headlines as a result. The MPs use uncompromisingly scathing language to attack the amateurism of the Cabinet Office in its bid to cull quangos. Read more...

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Bonfire of the inanities, by Bernard Jenkin

7 January 2011 | Bernard Jenkin

The coalition’s programme for government stated that it would ‘reduce the number and costs of quangos’. To achieve this, a review was conducted of all public bodies to identify those that it felt were no longer necessary. Read more...

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Quango cull: where’s the evidence? By Marc Cetkowski

3 November 2010 | Marc Cetkowski

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude insisted today that the government was not ideologically driven to scrap quangos, nor was it simply to save money. Its main motivation is to increase accountability. Read more...

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In defence of quangos, by Colin Talbot

15 October 2010 | Colin Talbot

The Great Quango Cull has turned out to be rather less dramatic than advertised, and the reasons given have shifted from being about saving money to increasing ‘accountability’. Even this government’s determination to thin out the ranks of quangos seems to have stalled. Six hundred and forty-eight of the existing 901 bodies will remain, although most will be affected in some way. Read more...

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Qualms over quango cull, by Conor Ryan

24 September 2010 | Conor Ryan

It is a strange notion that because an organisation is a quango, it is inherently worse than something run by the civil service. Yet that seems to be the sole rationale for Cabinet Minister Francis Maude’s zealous cull of these arm’s length bodies. Reading through the list leaked to the Daily Telegraph, an organ guaranteed to back Maude over timid ministers, one is struck not by the absurdity of many of the bodies to be axed, but by their obvious usefulness. Read more...

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Life after death, by Judy Hirst

2 September 2010 | Judy Hirst

So what did the Audit Commission ever do for us? Not much, judging from the chorus yelling ‘good riddance’ as soon as Communities Secretary Eric Pickles announced the watchdog’s death. Read more...

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Municipal makeover, by Nick Comfort

11 August 2010 | Nick Comfort

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Quango quandary, by Alan Trench

27 July 2010 | Alan Trench

News of the UK Government’s plan to cut a number of quangos raises immediate devolution concerns.  I can’t pretend to understand how the UK Film Council relates to bodies promoting the film industry elsewhere, like the former Scottish Screen (now part of Creative Scotland); there may well be overlap and duplication, even if such bodies have different remits.  But two raise immediate concerns. Read more...

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Banking on a green future, by Steve Lang

29 June 2010 | Steve Lang

Today’s report from Bob Wigley’s Green Investment Bank Commission will no doubt ricochet between policy-makers at departments across Whitehall. Read more...

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A reprieve for the regions? by Peter Hetherington

27 May 2010 | Peter Hetherington

Politicians of the right have never been entirely happy with regional policy in England since the Butskellite consensus of the 50s and early 60s, when governments of red and blue dished out vast sums to deliver new industries to the north and Scotland: car plants to Merseyside, and Clydeside, steel works to South Wales and Lanarkshire, and so on. Read more...

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