Quangos: The Unseen Government of the UK

One of the flagship policies of the Libertarian Party is to scrap income tax, to be paid for by eliminating the majority of Britains worthless Quango's..

Our critics say that this is an uncosted policy, would be impossible, would hit front line services and would create an unstable economy. I say that is Bunkum.

When NuLab came to power in 1999 there were a total of 135 Quango's, and in their first manifesto they promised to reduce that number and make government smaller.

Today, The TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA) presents the full list of the UK's vast quango industry, a detailed run-down of the staff and cost of the 1,162 bodies, boards and agencies that make up Britain's Unseen Government. It is now five years since the Parliamentary Select Committee on Public Administration recommended that the Government publish such a list, a recommendation that the Government has failed to fulfil. In the absence of an official list, the TPA has compiled one instead, providing the public with the most comprehensive information available on the organisations that increasingly spend their money and influence their lives without democratic oversight. The report can be found here (PDF).

Key Findings:

• There are 1,162 quangos in the UK, running at a total cost to the taxpayer of £64 billion, equivalent to £2,550 per household.
• Even under the Cabinet Office's restrictive definition of quangos, the cost of these bodies has risen 50% in the last ten years.
• UK quangos now employ an army of almost 700,000 bureaucrats.
• Even the Government itself does not know the full extent of the unaccountable quango industry, which range from the massive e.g. Job Centre Plus (Staff: 70,042, Cost: £3.5 billion) and the Courts Service (Staff: 19,986, Cost: £704.8 million); to the bizarre e.g. the British Potato Council (Staff: 49); or the West Northants Development Corporation (Staff: 34, Cost: £15.3 million)
• When the total number of quangos is added to the other government subsidiaries such as local authorities and NHS trusts, the total number of organisations controlled by the UK Government rises to 2,063, costing the taxpayer £257 billion and employing over 5.1 million people.

Ben Farrugia, author of the report and Policy Analyst at the TaxPayers' Alliance, said:

"Government in the UK is now so large, diverse and complex that it is impossible for anyone to manage effectively, let alone by Ministers with no prior experience of management and little in-depth understanding of the work carried out by their departments. Government today tries to do too much, and consequently fails; the structure of government needs to change if we hope to see better value and significant improvements in our public services."

The full report provides a full list of the quangos along with individual data on staff numbers, taxpayer funding and expenditure as well as national totals and can be found here (PDF).

A Libertarian Government would look to remove the majority of these worthless Quango's, using the money saved to scrap Income tax, Capital Gains tax, Inheritance tax and reduce the burden on business by cutting Corporation tax to the lowest in Europe.

As a Libertarian I believe in small government. Labour dont, The Conservatives don't, and neither do the LibDem's. They would be happy to continue needlessly spending your money, indeed the Conservatives have already pledged to keep the same level of spending as Labour, wasting it on worthless Quango's and still asking for more to pay their inflated salaries, a 40% wage rise, expenses and now the new Childcare allowance for MP's worth many thousands.

 

 

HatTip TaxPayers Alliance