2025-04-29
What do we think of QUANGOs?
No really, what do we think?
Are they an undesirable unaccountable but essentially just a peripheral part of our machinery of government that we don't really understand much about, but we suppose don't do too much damage?
Or are they a terminal cancer on the body politic that is sucking the lifeblood out of our economy?
Given the recent revelations by DOGE from across the pond, should we be worried that the UK has exactly the same problem, a problem that may amount to authorised looting by corporate crime with the tacit or even perhaps open connivance of the government / civil service?
Does the fact that the title of this article seems incongruously inapplicable to the subject in hand offer us a hint?
"These organisations are designed to operate independently from ministerial control and wield considerable power. They are responsible for regulation, public services and policy implementation"
So - is the NHS a QUANGO? Not any more perhaps. Will this improve matters? Or is it a case of something must be done, this is something, so we will do it (thereby pushing any assessment of improved operation well into the long grass of the future)?
So in what way are they accountable to anybody, but especially to the public that they serve? As Tony Benn was apt to ask: "How do we get rid of you?"
"They employ close to 400,000 people on a budget of £390 billion per year, nearly 300 per cent more than our total deficit and over a third of our entire yearly £1.3 trillion government spend"
In the regrettable absence of a fully functional DOGE UK, TCW Daily offers some much-needed insight.
