‘Bonfire of the Quangos’? Start with the GLA.

By Lopa Patel, 23 July 2009

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then my picture (left) with London Mayor Boris Johnson speaks volumes! Worry not; I have not become a dyed-in-the-wool, raving Tory. I was merely persuaded to attend last Monday’s (13 July 2009) London Assembly Conservative Group’s Summer Reception hosted at City Hall by Boris Johnson where he delivered a lectern-thumping pre-UK Election 2010 speech if I ever heard one. Still, it got me thinking.....

If Conservative Party Leader, David Cameron wants to have a “bonfire of the quangos” as he announced last week, then why not start with the GLA and LDA first? OK, they are not strictly quangos, but seeing as they suck London dry of money and deliver absolutely nothing of value in return – they sound like a quango to me!

Here are my top 5 quangos for the bonfire, David.

1. GLA and the LDA – Cost Saving= @ £400million
The advantages of scrapping the GLA (a precedent set by former Tory PM Margaret Thatcher) is the it: frees up Boris to help you fight the Election 2010 (yikes!), has minimal impact on London (Boris has not acquired the moniker “Do Nothing Mayor” for nothing you know) and the money can be returned to Londoners who’ll use it to support the Capital’s retail spending.

2. EHRC, Cost Saving = £70 million
The advantages of scrapping the EHRC (Equality and Human Rights Commission) is that it has despot ‘Teflon Trevor’ (Phillips) as its head who has the support of Harriet Harman and no one else (in the entire country) and produces a number of surveys and reports widely disregarded by everyone whom they are supposed to effect.

3. Oftel, Ofcom, Ofqual….Of-with-them-all I say! In fact, any quango whose name starts with the word ‘Of’ should immediately be switched off, permanently. Potential Cost Saving = £250million

4. ACE, a poorly judged three letter acronym if there ever was one. The Arts Council England is anything but ‘Ace’. Set up to distribute funding to the Arts – this amounted to £533 million of tax payers money in 2009 - Ace should be axed and opera singers left to “sing for their supper”. I hear Covent Garden’s piazza is a good place for this.

5. Business Links are somewhat of a misnomer seeing has no business is actually done there. The advantage of scrapping Business Links is that, of course, the business community will not notice. Cost Saving=£200million

* Quango – non-departmental public body, funded by the taxpayer. It is estimated that there are between 790 – 1100 quangos in the UK. Official figures show that last year, the quangos accounted for over £34 billion of public spending, and received a twelve percent increase in funding. Last year, sixty-eight quango heads paid themselves more than the Prime Minister. Information from David Cameron's speech 'People Power - Reforming Quangos'
http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2009/07/David_Cameron_People_Power_-_Reforming_Quangos.aspx