Sunday 6 March 2011

Quango bango

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  The Gov has sneaked the news under the radar with the MP expenses “thing” taking precedence that spending on quangos, the controversial arms-length public bodies which control huge swathes of spending on areas like health and education, increased by a quarter over the last three years, from £37billion to £46.5billion

The figures were released without fanfare on the Cabinet Office's website last night.

A Cabinet Office report showed that spending on the quangos, or executive “non-departmental public bodies”, rose by £3.5 billion - or 7 per cent - to £46.5billion last year.

The latest figures mean that spending on the organisations has now increased by £10billion or 25 per cent over the past three years.

Of the £46.5billion, £38.4billion was funded directly by Government, with the remainder coming from a combination of fees, charges, levies and National Lottery and European Union funding.

The number of the public bodies fell from 827 to 790 between 2008 and 2009, but staff employed by the executive bodies increased from 92,500 to 110,000 people.

The figures, from the Cabinet Office’s Public Bodies, excludes executive agencies, public corporations, non-ministerial departments and many of the local and regional quangos created by Labour.

According to research by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, which campaigns against wasteful spending of public money, there were 1,152 quangos in the UK in 2008, costing the taxpayer £90 billion.

A spokesman for the alliance said: “The Government evidently felt this was a good day to bury the bad news about our bloated quango state.

"Despite all the rhetoric, these unaccountable bureaucrats continue to spend a huge amount of taxpayers’ money without any need to answer to the people.

“We could save billions by scrapping many of these bodies, and cutting down or amalgamating many others. It is time taxpayers’ were given control of how their own taxes are spent.”

Quangos cost the UK just £21.4billion in 1997/98, a year after Labour came to power promising a "bonfire of the quangos".

 

YE GODS! why do we have a government when all their work is farmed out to these money pits.

 

Yes there should be a “bonfire” and 600 plus MPs should be on it.

 

 

Angus

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