Cameron said many quangos had a justifiable technical function
Nope, many if not most are doing things that government however defined should not be attempting to do at all. That\’s exactly why they should be culled.
He\’s also being incoherent:
\”I have said that our goal is democratic accountability, not bureaucratic accountability – and I mean it. So even when power is delegated to a quango, with a new Conservative government the minister will remain responsible for the outcomes … There will be no more hiding behind the cloak of quango independence.\”
Just as you shouldn\’t have power without responsibility so you cannot have responsibility without power. As soon as a Minister is mae resonsible for what a quango does then that Minister will interfere in what it does. Thus politicising again.
There should be no quangos, period. In most cases they do things which do not need to be done. If a case is found where they are doing something useful, then that should be done directly by government.
I agree with the comment above partially – I would have said that if there is a function which the QuANGO is performing that is useful, then the free market will fulfil that function if it is allowed to do so.
OK. How about NICE; that is a Quango, I don’t want it politicised. I don;t want it abolished either.
Answers that say well it should be a free market don;t count. We can’t wish away hte NHS and healthcare rationing, it is with and we have to work within the context of what we had.
Cameron made a good shout today, I was there. He said let’s have some principles and try adn apply them. I think it would reduce Quango’s by about half at least and make the rest shrink and get on with their job.
I don’t see anything wrong in what Cameron said, or anything that contradicts what you’ve said- the large majority of quangos should be culled but there are a handful that should remain- the Electoral Commission seems useful for example.
The problem with quangos is the lack of democratic oversight of their decisions, their spending or who gets employed to them.
The real purpose of Quangos is to provide a very nice earner for senior civil servants to fatten up their pensions after they “retire”.
Hence you can expect a full court press from the Permanent Secretaries (aka the “Sir Humphreys”) to retain and augment this nice delicious gravy train every bit as iniquitous as the EU gravy train (except there’s no UKIP railing against it – I wonder why?)
Their employees have a technical function. The function is to provide tension weights for ropes.