The prime minister is aiming to reduce ‘waste in the civil service’ by closing down dozens of government quangos.
Pat McFadden is reportedly drafting legislation to shut down quangos, including the Migration Advisory Council, in one act of parliament.
The “world’s biggest quango”, NHS England, was shut down last month and NHS operations were brought back under government control.
The government also announced that it would cut 10,000 civil service positions in order to reduce the government’s operating costs.
According to reports, the legislation may lead to a reorganisation of over 300 bodies with no formal affiliation that spend between them more than PS350billion in public funds.
McFadden wrote to all Whitehall departments asking them to justify their quangos who advise them or face being closed, merged or having powers returned to the department.
Keir starmer, who told his cabinet in a statement last month that the ministers should not “outsource” decisions, will bring back Quangos which have significant powers to make policies of national significance under their departmental control.
Those who have a regulatory role, such as those that monitor the government or defend the rule of laws, should not be affected.
Mike Clancy, general secretary of Prospect, said that “Special civil servants who work around the country as part of arm’s length bodies perform incredibly important and often underappreciated work in Westminster.”
If these functions were to be returned to central departments, there would need to be clear goals and rationales for doing so.
Many independent bodies perform important safety functions and have advisory roles that require their independence from the central government. It is important to know how these functions will be maintained in the event of a merger.
The civil service must be able to hire and retain specialists.
According to the government, the number central government public organisations (or quangos), has increased from 474 in Jan. 2015 to 555 by Jan. 2020 and 603 by Jan. 2025.
Starmer, in December, set his sights on dramatic Whitehall efficiency, saying that he believed ” Too many people are comfortable With the tepid Bath of Managed Decline”.
The Public Accounts Committee’s 2021 Report on the “bonfire of quangos”, which was undertaken by the coalition government in 2010, found that the “big cut” in the number that had been promised in the ‘quangos,’ has “been restricted”.
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Dame Meg Hillier was chair of the PAC up until last year. She said: “The famous bonfire of quangos of a decade earlier failed to ignite and we’ve actually seen the government wave through too many half-baked cases for arm’s-length bodies since.” Public appointments of these leaders lack transparency and accountability, which poses a serious risk to their reputation and to how the government uses them to achieve its objectives.
