May 2008 22

We've found out what quangos do5

They write in to newspapers justifying their own existence, apparently. Guy Attenborough, the Head of Communications for the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board has got a letter in today’s Daily Express in response to Patrick O’Flynn’s excellent article about our Unseen Government report.

Mr Attenborough correctly points out that the British Potato Council and the Milk Development Council are both funded by levies on their respective industries rather than from central taxpayer funds. That is rather a distinction without a difference, though – if I was a potato processor I would find it hard to take comfort in the knowledge that the BPC is funded not through central taxation but through an industry levy I am forced to pay. A levy that is exactly like a, erm, tax. 

Crinkle_cut Fundamentally these "levies" are taxes on selected industries, as the Government effectively runs a closed shop – pay your subs to the British Potato Council or your crinkle cutting days are over.

Beyond that, it’s important to remember that the point of the report was not just the direct cost to the taxpayer, but the problems caused by the sheer quantity of these unaccountable bodies, and the chaotic structure of government in general. Even if, by some miracle, the British Potato Council was run with no overheads, or its bills were paid voluntarily by a potato-loving benefactor, it would still be a burden both in regulatory terms on its industry and especially in terms of the ministerial department which has to oversee it.

Government ministers are besieged by the range and number of different organisations that report to them on a myriad of different topics. It is not just the Potato Council’s bills that we are concerned with, it is the snowstorm of paperwork, reports, consultations and other documents that they and their 1,161 fellow quangos produce. The essential services of this country are struggling at least in part because their are so many other calls on ministers’ time. No matter what Mr Attenborough says, these quangos are a burden on taxpayers.

It’s also worth noting that the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, for which Mr Attenborough works, is a new quango covering the field broadly occupied by the Milk Development Council, British Potato Council etc. Excellent, you might think, they’re scrapping little bodies and consolidating their responsibilities. Sadly, it’s not so; the BPC, MDC and all the other little ones are still there, living inside the AHDB which is in fact just a whole new level of quango. And so it continues.

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  • Acorn

    Mark
    According to the Whole Government Accounting Team’s spreadsheet, there are 1281 “bodies” identified for accounting purposes. The excellent TPA Unseen Government report says there are 1162.
    Please advise the whereabouts of the missing 119.
    Is there any connection between this number and the fact that there are 119 Westminster MPs, that have some level of Ministerial status?
    See “excel file of appendix 3 – list of bodies” on attached web-page.
    http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk./documents/public_spending_reporting/whole_of_government_accounts/wga_guidance_index.cfm

  • David Eyles

    Ben Farrugia’s original report was a big step in the right direction and to which I have e-mailed a response – but not yet received a reply.
    In essence, I pointed out that there are large numbers of quangos so far unrecorded in Ben’s report, mostly in the rural spheres of interest. It seemed that after Sir Don Curry’s report on Sustainable Food and Farming, that every government department fell over themselves to spawn more mini quangos.
    What seems to have happened is that Defra has funded some new organisations, and the Regional Governments Offices have funded some more. They in turn have taken money from the EU and the DTi.
    All of the mini quangos I have mentioned in my e-mail to Ben have not been mentioned in any of your reports so far and neither are they mentioned in the Treasury link provided by Acorn above. In that link, there is Appendix 1 which is about “Small and Minor Bodies.” Note that some of these are mentioned in Appendix 3, but by no means all. There appears to be confusion in the Treasury – what a surprise.
    There is a further tendency that I have detected. It seems that some little quangos have sprung up with funding from multiple sources, including local government. As a result, they slip under the radar of the Treasury and anyone else making enquiries, unless you happen to know that they actually exist.
    This is vitally important work that you are doing, so keep digging. Apart from the obvious direct expense of running all these quangos, there are two further very worrying sources of cost: The first is that there are lots of “consultants” who exist off the back of funding provided by these bodies. The second (and more worrying) is that all of the quango direct employees are presumably on public service pay and conditions. And that means pensions that are funded directly by the present and future taxpayer. The future liability for the taxpayer is beyond mind-boggling.
    It is quite clear that this government ahve completely lost control of expenditure in virtually every department. Its no wonder that we are all paying so much tax.

  • Acorn

    David
    Ben’s report does mention a total of 2063 identified “bodies”, including the NHS and LAs. The Treasury WGA team show circa. 1281. The last “Public Bodies 2007″ had 827. The latter was a much reduced version of the 2006 version
    I don’t know if we are talking apples or oranges with any of these reports. Ben’s (i.e. TPA)research capacities are much better than mine; but, I agree that this is definitely a subject worth investigation to six decimal places at least.
    The same goes for the cost of them and where the multiple accounting occurs. The 2006 version of Public Bodies says £167 billion gross expenditure (table 6)for instance. There is obviously someone getting more economical with the truth, the more the likes of TPA get interested in the subject.
    http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/documents/pdf/public_bodies/publicbodies2006.pdf
    Also see
    http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/about/public/bodies.asp

  • http://profile.typekey.com/benfarrugia/ Ben Farrugia

    Acorn
    Thank you for your comments so far, and for the links provided. My hope with the report was that people would begin to appreciate the real size and cost of government today – most of which is so disguised that we the public don’t know what we’re paying for – and from the information you and Mr Eyles provided, it’s clear that it’s a problem in dire need of a solution.
    In response to some of your queries, there are indeed definitional problems in all this (“apples and oranges”). That problem is that the government uses very restrictive and self-serving definitions, which seem to change every year. As you point out, government figures give the impression that the number of bodies and their expenditure has gone down, when in fact they have gone up. Yet more proof that government statistics are a less than reliable guide.
    As to the 1281 bodies listed in the Whole Government Accounting Team’s spreadsheet, I’m unclear as to where this figure is from exactly, but as you noted above, including NHS and LA’s, the TPA found over 2000. This is partly becuase I included all those bodies associated with the devolved assemblies too; after all, their money all comes from Central government.
    Thanks again.

  • Acorn

    Thanks Ben,
    BTW; we have not mentioned it yet but the ERC “Quango Database” was where I started looking into this subject. They currently have circa 1219 “bodies” on their database, at a cost of £174.7 billion for 2006. Perhaps it is time to compare notes?
    http://quangos.ercouncil.org/home/