News: Quango's: The Unseen Government of the UK (TaxPayers' Alliance)

Westcountryman · 18-05-2008, 03:15 PM

Quango's: The Unseen Government of the UK

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

In today's Sunday Times, the TPA launched 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 is the first in a series of papers on the Structure of British Government and the problems caused by its bewildering scale, staggering range of activities and chaotic duplication.

The full report can be read here, and the Sunday Times coverage is available here.

The key findings of the report are:

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 ranges from the massive e.g. Job Centre Plus (Staff: 70,042, Cost: £3.5 billion) the Courts Service (Staff: 19,986, Cost: £704.8 million); to the bizarre e.g. the British Potato Council (Staff: 49); 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 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.”

Wider Context: UK Government - impossible to manage

Over the past hundred years Britain has witnessed a relentless increase in the size of government. Politicians have steadily taken responsibility and authority away from civil society, establishing a presence in every aspect of British life. Government today spends 45.1 per cent of Britain’s GDP, employees nearly 20 per cent of the UK workforce and regulates or provides almost every service available to UK citizens.

Too large: Government employs just under 6 million people and has an annual expenditure of almost £600 billion. Twenty senior ministers and around 500,000 civil servants oversee 1,162 public bodies, 365 NHS Trusts, 469 Local Authorities, 60 police forces (140,500 officers) and countless other local and regional spending bodies. No-one could effectively manage such an organisation, and as such British government suffers from terrible inefficiencies, waste, and ultimately depreciation in the quality of services provided.

Too diverse: Effective management requires an in-depth knowledge of the sector in which the organisation operates, its customers and processes. Yet the breadth of government today makes this impossible. No Minister, or anyone else, could have sufficient knowledge to agree the vision, objectives, plans and budgets for any department of government; their interests are just too diverse. For example, the predecessor to today’s Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), the Department of Trade and Industry, in 2006-07 managed an expenditure of £23 billion, 244,000 staff (there are only four FTSE companies larger) and 68 subsidiary public bodies – advising on everything from employment, architectural design to chemical weapons, not to mention the activities of two major British corporations, Royal Mail and Remploy. Astonishingly, the DTI still only constituted a small unit of government, accounting for only 3% of total staff and 4% of total expenditure.

Government provides monopoly services: Free from the threat of customer loss or bankruptcy, monopolies remove the basic tools of management – the need to innovate, improve and reduce costs. The services government provides – education and health in particular – exist as monopolies, presenting the majority of tax payers with little choice and ever sinking standards.

Judged on the outcomes – Failing public services

The inadequacies of our current structure of government are clear when the quality of services is considered.

Education: Four out of ten pupils in state education now leave school without the minimum standards in English and Maths that the QCA deems necessary for ‘Life, Learning and Work’. After 11 years of schooling, at a total cost of £75,000, the state system fails to provide individuals with the means necessary to succeed, trapping them in poverty and dependency. Year on year, British educational standards fall in comparison to other wealthy countries.

Healthcare: The standard of care provided by the National Health Service is now ranked 16 in a comparison of 19 peer countries. In 2004 alone, 17,157 deaths amenable to healthcare occurred in the NHS, which would have been avoided in Britain matched the performance of European peers. Levels of hospital-acquired infections are among the highest in Europe and waiting times continue to force people abroad for treatment.

Welfare: The complex system of tax credits, allowances and income support has created a welfare trap, while at the same time necessitating a large and costly bureaucracy to administer it.

Nothing but fundamental structural reform can reverse the trend of declining standards in our public services. Government is poorly designed to deliver the services which people deserve, and after a decade of spending, money alone is clearly not the answer.

The principles of reform

To give the public a higher quality and wider choice of services at a greatly reduced cost, and most importantly, return control over their lives:

Politicians, advised by a small, informed team of civil servants, should set high level policy. This is the area where they can make a real contribution, freeing them from day to day management responsibilities.
Civil society, employing experienced management, should execute that policy.

The first step towards reform must be a proper assessment of the true size and cost of Government. The TaxPayers’ Alliance’s ‘Structure of Government’ series will attempted to do this, beginning here with a comprehensive guide to Britain’s unseen state.

The TaxPayers' Alliance - Home

ukpopdems · 21-05-2008, 03:33 PM

Great westcountryman. I love these detailed exposes from Taxpayers alliance, especially as the success of UKpopdems policy delivery is very highly dependent on getting rid of £100billion of back-office waste and bureaucracy and allocating it to a massive increases in front-line delivery resources and the infrastructure to support them. This kind of detail demonstrates it can be done.

18-05-2008, 03:15 PM	#1 (permalink)
Westcountryman Uber Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: The Westcountry. Posts: 5,922 Party: None	Quango's: The Unseen Government of the UK (TaxPayers' Alliance) Quango's: The Unseen Government of the UK The most comprehensive picture ever of the UK's 1,162 Quangos In today's Sunday Times, the TPA launched 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 is the first in a series of papers on the Structure of British Government and the problems caused by its bewildering scale, staggering range of activities and chaotic duplication. The full report can be read here, and the Sunday Times coverage is available here. The key findings of the report are: 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 ranges from the massive e.g. Job Centre Plus (Staff: 70,042, Cost: £3.5 billion) the Courts Service (Staff: 19,986, Cost: £704.8 million); to the bizarre e.g. the British Potato Council (Staff: 49); 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 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.” Wider Context: UK Government - impossible to manage Over the past hundred years Britain has witnessed a relentless increase in the size of government. Politicians have steadily taken responsibility and authority away from civil society, establishing a presence in every aspect of British life. Government today spends 45.1 per cent of Britain’s GDP, employees nearly 20 per cent of the UK workforce and regulates or provides almost every service available to UK citizens. Too large: Government employs just under 6 million people and has an annual expenditure of almost £600 billion. Twenty senior ministers and around 500,000 civil servants oversee 1,162 public bodies, 365 NHS Trusts, 469 Local Authorities, 60 police forces (140,500 officers) and countless other local and regional spending bodies. No-one could effectively manage such an organisation, and as such British government suffers from terrible inefficiencies, waste, and ultimately depreciation in the quality of services provided. Too diverse: Effective management requires an in-depth knowledge of the sector in which the organisation operates, its customers and processes. Yet the breadth of government today makes this impossible. No Minister, or anyone else, could have sufficient knowledge to agree the vision, objectives, plans and budgets for any department of government; their interests are just too diverse. For example, the predecessor to today’s Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), the Department of Trade and Industry, in 2006-07 managed an expenditure of £23 billion, 244,000 staff (there are only four FTSE companies larger) and 68 subsidiary public bodies – advising on everything from employment, architectural design to chemical weapons, not to mention the activities of two major British corporations, Royal Mail and Remploy. Astonishingly, the DTI still only constituted a small unit of government, accounting for only 3% of total staff and 4% of total expenditure. Government provides monopoly services: Free from the threat of customer loss or bankruptcy, monopolies remove the basic tools of management – the need to innovate, improve and reduce costs. The services government provides – education and health in particular – exist as monopolies, presenting the majority of tax payers with little choice and ever sinking standards. Judged on the outcomes – Failing public services The inadequacies of our current structure of government are clear when the quality of services is considered. Education: Four out of ten pupils in state education now leave school without the minimum standards in English and Maths that the QCA deems necessary for ‘Life, Learning and Work’. After 11 years of schooling, at a total cost of £75,000, the state system fails to provide individuals with the means necessary to succeed, trapping them in poverty and dependency. Year on year, British educational standards fall in comparison to other wealthy countries. Healthcare: The standard of care provided by the National Health Service is now ranked 16 in a comparison of 19 peer countries. In 2004 alone, 17,157 deaths amenable to healthcare occurred in the NHS, which would have been avoided in Britain matched the performance of European peers. Levels of hospital-acquired infections are among the highest in Europe and waiting times continue to force people abroad for treatment. Welfare: The complex system of tax credits, allowances and income support has created a welfare trap, while at the same time necessitating a large and costly bureaucracy to administer it. Nothing but fundamental structural reform can reverse the trend of declining standards in our public services. Government is poorly designed to deliver the services which people deserve, and after a decade of spending, money alone is clearly not the answer. The principles of reform To give the public a higher quality and wider choice of services at a greatly reduced cost, and most importantly, return control over their lives: Politicians, advised by a small, informed team of civil servants, should set high level policy. This is the area where they can make a real contribution, freeing them from day to day management responsibilities. Civil society, employing experienced management, should execute that policy. The first step towards reform must be a proper assessment of the true size and cost of Government. The TaxPayers’ Alliance’s ‘Structure of Government’ series will attempted to do this, beginning here with a comprehensive guide to Britain’s unseen state. The TaxPayers' Alliance - Home __________________ Manus haec inimica tyrannis ense petit placidam sub libertate quietam - "This hand of mine, which is hostile to tyrants, seeks by the sword quiet peace under liberty."

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21-05-2008, 03:33 PM	#2 (permalink)
ukpopdems Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 237	Great westcountryman. I love these detailed exposes from Taxpayers alliance, especially as the success of UKpopdems policy delivery is very highly dependent on getting rid of £100billion of back-office waste and bureaucracy and allocating it to a massive increases in front-line delivery resources and the infrastructure to support them. This kind of detail demonstrates it can be done.