Articles
The parliamentary summer recess provides a break for politicians and something of a vacuum for political columnists, where we may go and hunt lions in Clacton, if that appeals.
Some trade unions seize the opportunity to raise issues that might otherwise be drowned out by the flood of announcements, policy initiatives and general chatter and tittle-tattle. One such move last month came from Prospect, which launched a report on a subject that will have slipped off the radar of many: quangos.
As you may recall, soon after the last election the coalition made the decision to abolish and merge hundreds of quangos. Unions and the opposition derided the plans, which the government claimed would save large amounts of money. Now Prospect, which represents engineers and scientists, has done some sums, and the figures do not make pretty reading.
The union was responding to government claims that abolishing the quangos would
save £1.4 billion during this parliament and £2.6 billion by 2015. Prospect said that this was a “false economy” that was “close to a national scandal”.
Prospect’s deputy general secretary Dai Hudd said: “If ever there was a smoke-and-mirrors exercise, this is it. While more than 106 bodies have been shut down, most staff have had to be transferred to other organisations because the work still has to be done.
“The price of delivering these changes, including redundancy costs, will be up to
£900 million by the government’s own admission, without counting the cost of the work being done elsewhere, by either central government or replacement organisations.”
A saving of £500 million, then – without accounting for the work that other government departments or organisations have had to pick up. Why should engineers be concerned?
Not because of the abolition of most of the quangos, which were not technology-related. But the closure of the Regional Development Agencies is a different matter. The RDAs helped companies to secure backing from the European Regional Development Fund. It is now thought that much of this funding might be going begging, because the RDAs provided the necessary match-funding to help firms to access the European pot.
Some at Prospect believe that companies are struggling to access the money through the Department for Communities and Local Government, which is now responsible for this area. Where will the money go if it is not spent? The answer is: back to the Treasury.
“At a time when the whole country is crying out for growth and jobs, it is unbelievable that the government is turning its back on a prime source of investment simply because of an ideological obsession about quangos,” said Hudd.
Prospect said it opposed the government’s programme for abolishing quangos because in most cases it results in centralisation of public service functions, which are taken over by civil service departments rather than by dedicated bodies that are specialists in their fields.
It remains to be seen whether the “bonfire of the quangos” might rise up the agenda once again during the new session of parliament.