May 2008 17

Quangos: The Unseen Government of the UK11

The most comprehensive picture ever of the UK’s 1,162 Quangos

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).

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Update: For the TaxPayers' Alliance's more recent survey of UK quangos (2007-08), see here (PDF)

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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).

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Update: For the TaxPayers' Alliance's more recent survey of UK quangos (2007-08), see here (PDF)

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  • Chris Whittington

    Government condemned by their own figures.
    Beautiful.

  • Patrick Harris

    The Government will use these figures to underpin their assertion that the numbers of civil servants is falling, the Quango cost are also omitted from the PSBR accounts.

  • Call me Dave

    It’s only money chaps. Launch an inquiry into the usefulness of quango’s – it’ll take a long time, long enough for me to get on one and make a fast buck at the serfs expense.
    Commoners will never understand the psyche of the bourgoise. Pay your taxes like good little law-abiding boys and girls and don’t complain or we’ll have you thrown in jail (fine you instead – need the money you know).
    The same attitude to public money permeats from the top of government all the way down.
    It’s just self serving greed isn’t it??

  • Alan Craigie

    Britian is fast becoming an unstoppable kleptocracy. When the number of people employed by quangos is added to the direct civil servants the numbers are over 50% of the electorate. When the inevitable choice becomes public spending cutbacks or tax increases a party can’t remain in power if they cutback.

  • Ann

    This is obscene.
    I’m a nurse in a busy inner city A&E department. Hospitals are collapsing, with patient care compromised to reduce costs. If the money saved was being invested in services for patients, it would be justifiable. But no, the money saved is being used to pay for this army of parasites. These people waste money on a monumental scale. The generous salaries, cushty “always at a jolly” lifestyle and expenses are a scandal. They just produce worthless policies and guidelines that are ignored.
    I wish MPs could come and spend time shadowing nurses in hospitals, to see the cuts that are being inflicted to pay for these leeches. Of course, they’d much rather have a cosy little chat with some nurse executive, who’d reassure them that key performance indicators had never been better. The quangos are a nice reward for nurses who play ball with the accountants. Our profession has been silenced through the government “buying off” our leaders, with jobs in and seats on the board of quangos.

  • Chris

    Poor Site Design.
    NEEDS :- Data in excel
    List of quango’s
    Budget
    No. of staff
    etc etc
    Spent too long looking for this KEY Information rather than just waffle ….Thankyou
    Analyst

  • George

    If anyone is at the point of planning their target retirement income which incorporates their state pension then they should first read the following:-
    http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/Taxes/BeginnersGuideToTax/IncomeTax/Taxallowancesandreliefs/DG_078571
    “If your income is over the income limit, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) will reduce the age-related allowance by half of the amount – £1 for every £2 – you have over that limit, until the basic rate allowance is reached. You’ll always get the basic allowance, whatever the level of your income. So if, for example, you’re 66 and have an income of £23,400 – £500 over the limit – HMRC would reduce your age-related Personal Allowance by £250 to £9,240”.

  • Dick Clay-Peters

    The list of quangos is alarming; but I could not find my favorite, namely the Payments Council. Its mission is to make us pay everything by direct debit, however inconvenient.

  • Pete

    Soviet effectively means rule by council. In Soviet Union this generally meant that quangos and other authorities (Lenin wrote how they would first start as services that were to be deliberately evolved into authorities) and they were staffed by the party elite and politically correct (a term that started in the Soviet Union) businessmen and such.
    Luckily that’s not happening here!