Conservative plan to cut quangos ‘would have negligible effect’

9 Jul 09
Policy experts have dismissed Conservative plans to save money by cutting quangos. They say the potential gains are negligible and similar proposals have proved ineffective in the past.
By David Williams

09 July 2009

Policy experts have dismissed Conservative plans to save money by cutting quangos. They say the potential gains are negligible and similar proposals have proved ineffective in the past.

Speaking at the Reform think-tank on July 6, Opposition leader David Cameron announced that quangos would be reviewed under a Tory government, claiming they were unaccountable, bureaucratic and expensive.

The bodies should perform only strictly administrative functions, he said. He also pledged to scrap several of them and strip communications regulator Ofcom of its policy-making role.

However, Guy Lodge, associate director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, said Cameron was picking on an easy target. He doubted quangos could be a source of significant savings.

He also pointed out that the Conservatives have proposed to create several new ones, including an independent NHS board, which he said would be ‘the single biggest super-quango that has ever been’.

Lodge said: ‘Quangos attract no public support and they don’t talk back so it’s no surprise Cameron is doing this. Politicians go for them, particularly when they’re in opposition, but they find when they’re confronted with the realities of governing, that actually they need these things. If they take particular functions out of quangos they will be going back into government departments, so you’re not actually getting the efficiency savings you claim.’

Lodge accepted that quangos should be looked at for potential efficiencies, and that Cameron was right to raise their lack of accountability. But, he added, accountability would not necessarily increase just because functions were taken back into departments overseen by ministers.

Cameron’s announcement came on the day the Local Government Association launched an inquiry into the ‘quango state’. LGA chair Margaret Eaton called for a radical overhaul.

Cameron opened his assault on quangos in a speech to the LGA conference on July 2.

But Local Government Information Unit chief executive Andy Sawford said quango reform was ‘a bit of red meat’ tossed out to the conference.

The potential savings ‘would not make a massive difference’, he said.

Did you enjoy this article?

AddToAny

Top