Shooting at Britain’s sitting quangos

Press, 30 March 1982, Page 16

Shooting at Britain’s sitting quangos

By

PHILIP HOLLAND,

a British M.P., writing in

“The Daily Telegraph”, London.

The British Quangocracy peaked in 1979. For 35 years the number of quangos had increased year by year. By 1979 they had reached their zenith in terms of numbers, variety, powers and influence. Many activities at home, at work and at leisure were dominated by the edicts or the influence of the new “apparatchiks” of an emerging British-style soviet society. Unelected, unrepresentative quangurus had been appointed to take over and control the commanding heights of the economy. Forty thousand ministerial placemen' governed some 3000 official bodies which included over 400 executive agencies of government. In the five years before 1979 a number of powerful new bodies had been established to carry out socialist policies without any let or hindrance from Parliament, irrespective of which political party had a majority. These bodies included the National Entdrprise Board, empowered to take into public ownership large areas of industry without requiring the approval of Parliament; the Price Commission, to interfere artificially with the impact of market forces on prices; and the Health Services Board, to eliminate pay beds from National. Health Service hospitals and control private nursing homes and hospitals. For more than 30 years it had become increasingly part of the thinking of Whitehall, trade union and the academic establishments that quangos could offer a panacea for all ills.

The reasoning went something like this. Set up an advisory body to consider it. This absolves Whitehall from

responsibility and provides an additional outlet for the underused energies of politically friendly academics and underemployed ex-councillors. Then •set up an executive agency to carry out the recommendations of the advisory body that continues in existence to advise it. The executive agency would relieve Whitehall of the need to do anything directly, while providing politically-committed peers, trade union leaders, former M.P.s and early-retired civil servants with more lucrative part-time or full time employment. It was against this background in the General Election year of 1979 that a conference of leading academics took place on quangos at Essex University. The papers submitted to that conference have now been assembled by the Reader in Government at Essex, Mr Anthony Barker, and published by Macmillan under the title “Quangos in Britain”. Not surprisingly, the book is about the rise of quangos and in his conclusion Mr Barker finds confirmation of their lasting importance in the modern British political system. It is, of course, tough on the contributors that more than two and a half years should have elapsed between writing and publication. In an attempt to bring the book up to date Mr Barker adds an appendix written after publication of the Conservative Governments first review of quangos in 1979, prepared by Sir Leo Pliatzki at the Prime Minister’s request, which listed for abolition 30 executive bodies and -211 advisory bodies. In his appendix Mr Barker falls into the trap, shared at that time by the Whitehall

mandarins, of thinking that Pliatzki represented the Government's total response to the quango campaign, instead of merely its first step.

He concludes that ministers are wisely preferring to improve quangos by replacing their chairman rather than considering abolition. In a Parliamentary answer to my question on February 19, 1982, the Prime Minister' announced a list of 112 abolitions of executive quangos and nearly 500 advisory bodies. These figures do not take account of the privatisation of a number of nationalised industry boards, nor do they include those executive quangos that are being streamlined and made more cost effective.

That nearly one-quarter of the executive quangos and nearly one-third of the very large number of advisory bodies, as defined by Pliatzki and inherited by Mrs Thatcher’s Government, are scheduled for abolition after only two and a half years is a quite remarkable achievement by any standards. Yet even this by no means represents the totality of effort by the Government.

Just before the end of 1981, a Civil Service Guide for Departments laid down a mixture of instruction and. code practice on the future nature of quangos and the relationships to be established forthwith between each department and its associated bodies. Under the new code, departments are required to carry out over-all reviews of the' bodies they sponsor from time to time to decide whether there is a continuing need for them; whether the service they provide could be available from another existing source;

whether they could usefully be decreased in size; or whether they could be amalgamated with other bodies. Bodies already affected by this treatment include the National Enterprise Board, the National Research and Development Council, the Sports Council, the National Film Development Fund, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research. Also under consideration are those products of the nanny State — the nationalised industries consumer councils. Departments have now received a firm instruction

that "whatever the precise degree of independence, the Minister is answerable to Parliament for whether the body is doing its work effectively, efficiently and with economy, and that it continues to fulfil a useful purpose." The advice to departments also requires Ministers to “take formal power to require production of information.”

New instructions have also been issued about their financial accountability. All bodies that rely on Government funds for 50 per cent or more of either their administrative expenditure or their gross expenditure are to be subjected. to

detailed financial control. Hard instruction is given that a sponsoring department must ensure that procedures exist to enable the Minister to discharge his responsibilities to Parliament for each body. Whenever a grant-in-aid is involved, the departmental accounting officer will need to satisfy himself about the quality of the body's management, its capacity to secure value for money and to safeguard public funds' against possible misuse. All these matters, therefore, become open to Parliamentary question, either on the floor of the House or in a select committee. The establishment of a new quango will in future require a lengthy catechism to be completed'by the would-be sponsoring department before engaging in consultations with the central departments and ultimately requiring Treasury approval for any quango likely to cost more than £5OOO ($12,000) a year. Those advisory bodies for whom the excuse is that they cost very little will henceforth be expected to be set up with either a finite remit, which will automatically lead to the dissolution of the committee when its task is done, or a finite lease of life after which the body will be automatically disbanded. Thus Mrs Thatcher’s Government has not been content merely to effect a substantial reduction in the number of quangos and to bring them all under Parliamentary scrutiny both as regards their finances and general activities. It is changing the thinking of the Whitehall mandarins. There is evidence recently of a change from “Yes. Minister" to "Not if it needs another quango, Minister." This must count as one of the first big success stories of the present Conservative Government.