I am in the Canary Wharf minimalist temple where Clifford Chance has its HQ listening to David Cameron’s speech on quango reform. He doesn’t want to promise the tired old “bonfire” cliche but he wants to make it clear he has something much bigger than an ashtray accident in mind.
But you do come away feeling this isn’t quite as dramatic as it might be… the sponsoring think tank Reform has listed what it sees as cullable quangos but the Tory leader isn’t going near it, citing the David (Lord) James experiment in the 2005 general election – listing specific bodies to be cut – as an example of how not to do it.
DC also stuck to his line that public sector pay was a matter for pay review boards – which Rob Hutton of Bloomberg pointed out to Mr Cameron sounded very much like a politician passing the buck to a quango.
In reality, pay review boards are heavily lent on by government to take account not just of recruitment and retrenchment but the state of the public finances and the economy as well.
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Where can I find Reform’s list of ‘cullable quangos’?
Reform’s director sets out some of his ideas in this article in today’s Times:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6643957.ece
I can’t think of an election where Tory politicians haven’t promised to cut the number of quangos. In truth, the numbers usually rise. Ministers tend to want committees of the great and the good to advise them on policy and don’t seem to realise that such committees are in fact advisory Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs – the official and preferred term for quangos).
One reform that’s been mentioned, taking away OFCOM’s policy-making functions, doesn’t save anything. It just means the function will pass back to the Departments for Culture and Business and Enterprise.
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