Streamlining the Quango State
The Adam Smith Institute’s latest paper, by Senior Fellow Tim Ambler, makes the case for reforming the administrative state:
Westminster governments have festooned themselves with public bodies, collectively barnacles on the ship of state. To govern well, the executive of a government (the Cabinet and ministers) should focus on governing and not be side-tracked by other functions. The Public Administration Select Committee and the National Audit Office have complained of the lack of any clear taxonomy of these “arm’s length bodies” (ALBs).
Some of these ALBs (non-departmental public bodies) are part of, and yet independent of, the executive at the same time. If being part of the executive is more important, they should be “executive agencies”; if being independent is more important, they should be accountable to another branch of state. The executive is only one branch of the state – the legislature and judiciary are others. Democractic accountability derives from Parliament, our elected representatives; the executive is only democratic to the extent that it is accountable to Parliament.
Sir Robin Ibbs created executive agencies to provide government departments with specialist units to deliver policies. Crucially, their performance should be measured against pre-defined quantified targets and reported annually.
The Cabinet Office lists 16 “non-ministerial departments” and 185 “non-departmental public bodies”, (i.e. quangos). This paper proposes reclassification as either executive agencies, reporting to some branch of the state other than the executive, merger with another body or its parent department, privatisation, or closure.
Not all readers will agree with every reclassification, but the wood matters more than individual trees. The key point is that bodies should be clearly classifed as either part of the executive or independent thereof and accountable to Parliament. There have been previous attempts to cull quangos, but 201 remain. This paper presents a vision for how to reorganise this quagmire. If the Government wished to act on it, further detailed work would be required.
Regulators and ombudsmen are also supposed to be fully independent of the executive and should therefore, like the National Audit Office, be answerable to the first branch of the state, namely Parliament. Furthermore, economic regulators were only created to transition their markets from state monopoly to competition and then depart. Ombudsmen should take over this function as part of continuing to ensure fair play for consumers.
Tribunals should be part of the third branch of the state, namely the judiciary.
This leaves a fourth category, national assets such as parks and museums, which are neither governing us, and therefore should not be part of the executive, nor do they fit into the judiciary. The legislature is not geared to supervise each one of these bodies. A clear taxonomy for all public bodies perhaps demands a further branch of state to supervise these public corporations. It would be answerable to Parliament, and therefore be democratically accountable like the executive and the judiciary.
Executives should focus on governing, no easy task. The current Government is considering how it should be streamlined to do so most effectively. This paper, and especially the proposed taxonomy, is a contribution to that discussion. While savings are not the objective, reductions of 33,885 staff and £3,249 million p.a. net costs would be achieved.