You have a point. But there is a simple solution. Radio spectrum anarchy:)

Quangos are easy targets for Tories, have been for a long time, it’s all a bit tired though and as you point out, the ones they’ve selected are odd choices, be best cutting back on the RDAs and the middle man for regeneration funding.

Good highlighting, Unity. I also liked this excellent Reform assertion.

“Take the Higher Education Funding Council for England, responsible for how much money universities should get. This is a fundamentally political question.”

It isn’t a fundamentally political question at all, and HEFCE do a decent job of making sure the cash is distributed reasonably. Amongst many of the other things they do. Not everyone will agree with how they do it, and they could stand to lose a few people, but they do it reasonably impartially and without excessive Ministerial interference (the policy has explicitly been that universities run their own affairs. This has, arguably, made the VCs more powerful than we’d like, but there you go).

The Tories don’t want the universities running their own affairs – Reform have confirmed it. They want to micromanage funding. There are a lot of bad ways to run a university system, but having all funding explicitly disbursed at the political whims of a Conservative minister – even if that minister is the able David Willetts – is about the worst I can possibly think of.

Let us not forget that the Tories only hate one specific kind of quango – those they didn’t set up themselves. They love ones full of their chums, and we’re going to see a proliferation of those in the next few years.

Modern day quangos acts as rge 21st century’s version of royal patronage in the 18 century and earlier. They allow governments’s to financially reward their followers and buy support.

There’s a process goes on whereby Murdoch educates the latest young hopeful into automatic obedience to his requirements.

Actually it would be so absurd for the Sun, Sky & Times to support Labour at the next election, and so unlikely to affect the result even if they did, that Murdoch has actually got the weakest hand he’s had in years.

So will Cameron use that advantage and demonstrate some independence of action and cojones?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha, As if.

Charlie,

You know nothing at all about most quangos. Do you work for Reform?

I’d agree with Ken on Charlie’s sweeping and false statements.

But Charlie appears to be agreeing with Ken.
“the Tories only hate one specific kind of quango – those they didn’t set up themselves. They love ones full of their chums, and we’re going to see a proliferation of those in the next few years” – Ken’s words…

A hypothetical situation, strategist.

I am in no way a gigantic, self-contradicting hyperbole merchant, apart from those extremely rare occasions that I am, such as the point that you highlighted.

I made my point badly, which is that the Tories only dislike quangos that pursue aims that they don’t like, or that prevent them from taking direct control of things that they want direct control over. They like quangos that follow Tory agendas, and previous administrations will show that. However, you’re right – I overegged that particular pudding. Although I would be very surprised if the current head of Reform did not end up as the head of a new Tory quango (unless he goes straight into Government), and equally surprised if he does not expect that (unless he’s standing as an MP).

It is this hypocrisy that annoys me – the pretence that they don’t like quangos – along with the overt admission that they want to play politics with areas of public life that they should not play with.

However, to say that “They allow governments’s to financially reward their followers and buy support” (sic) is not true. That’s not the case now, and Labour have used quangos, in a lot of cases, to try to minimise their own involvement in areas they think other people should be running. Some are not very good (the Learning and Skills Council being a good case in point – doomed no matter who gets in), but this administration have actually been largely ok at binning those that are not up to scratch.

A lot of people really don’t understand what quangos do, what they are for, and how they do it. Doesn’t stop them from commenting on them, of course.

Ken McKenzie:

Let us not forget that the Tories only hate one specific kind of quango – those they didn’t set up themselves. They love ones full of their chums, and we’re going to see a proliferation of those in the next few years.

It would be cheaper simply to nominate/appoint their own placemen – it’s what they did last time.

If you watch episodes of Yes, Minister from the 1980s, cutting quangos is a theme repeatedly used, with great hilarious effect, to illustrate the difficulty that actually exists in cutting Government spending.

I’m not aware that anything has actually changed since Yes, Minister went on air. That’s why it’s still so funny.

Except that quite often I feel like i’m stuck in a Yes, Minister time warp.

The Tories can shout all they want about cutting qunagos, I seriously doubt they will be able to do it.

Sir Humphry won’t let them.

Question: Is Osborne’s proposed ‘Office of Budgetary Responsibility’ (a) a quango (b) not directly accountable to Parliament (c) a means of the Chancellor offloading his responsibilities (d) all of the above?

Unity has revealed an unexpected anxiety for the health of quangos. He need not worry. A Cameron government would (not will, the future remains uncertain) be sure to reshape, and likely to multiply, quangos; bur is deeply unlikely to take significant powers from them.

Successive Tory and Labour governemnts have been creating increasing numbers of quangos for the last 50 years. First, and most importantly, they have been created to carry the can for decisions where Ministers do not want to be blamed for. Secondly, other quangos have been created to remove decisions which might attract political credit out of the hands of other politicians; most often out of the hands of local councillors.

It is possible that Cameron has strong political virtues that I fail to percieve. However the likelihood of David Cameron accepting any blame that can be ducked, or of his letting other politicians receive credit un-necessarily, is negligible. It is not so infinitesimal as the chance of Tony Blair doing either of those things; but only because Cameron is less competent than Blair.

Somebody appears to be putting down good money to get the Tories to commit themselves to reversing unwelcome policies from regulatory quangos. Should the Tories gain power, the financiers of this lobbying are likely to find that they have bought some cjhages in window dressing; but very unlikely to have persuaded Cameron to take tricky decisions into his own hands.

The key question here is accountability. Cameron seems to be saying that if a decision is made by a Minister there is accountability and if it is made by a QUANGO there isn’t. This isn’t necessarily so. A QUANGO usually has a clear mandate and guiidelines, and has to justify its decisions in terms of that mandate and guidelines. The processes are at least transparent. Ministers have much more leeway for opaque decisions, and MPs rarely have the interest or persistence to monitor what they are up to.

On the steam-powered radiogram Today programme, he was talking about taking the policy-making functions on education, etc, back into the civil service, directly under Ministerial authority – which, the way he was putting it, sounded unpleasantly like yet more politicisation of the civil service, which is exactly what everyone needs.

And he completely failed to address the question of how many more civil servants he would have to employ to compensate for the loss of the quangos…

But then it was a pathetic, cheesy, (and yeah, I remember the Yes, Minister episode, too – what a wonderfully educational series that was!) headline-grab, so maybe a sensible, detailed, fully-thought-through policy was too much to expect?

@9 Cheers Ken. Let those of us who are in no way gigantic, self-contradicting hyperbole merchants, apart from those extremely rare occasions when we are, stand together in solidarity and liberal conspiracy at all times!

Anyway, and sorry for my ongoing derail here, but Willetts has pissed on Andrew Haldenby’s bonfire re: HEFCE by saying that the body performs a “constitutionally essential role” in standing between ministers and universities. Which, indeed, it does.

Very sensible stuff there from Willetts.