A leaked Cabinet Office memo has shown that up to 180 quangos may be scrapped, 53 of which work within the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. A further three groups working under the Department for Energy and Climate Change also face being disbanded, while the Environment Agency is among 94 publicly funded bodies whose fate has yet to be decided.
Another 350 bodies have won a reprieve from the Government’s “bonfire of the quangos,” which is designed to save the taxpayer billions of pounds as part of an austerity drive. Among those also facing the axe are the Royal Commission on Environment Pollution, British Waterways and the Advisory Committee on Carbon Abatement Technology.
Caroline Spelman, Secretary of State for Defra had warned of such drastic measures in July. She said despite Defra being the “Government's emergency service” many of the issues its quangos dealt with were now “mainstream” and a “part of what the department does as a matter of course.”
As a result, she said they would be put onto the “bonfire” in a bid to balance the budget.
Whilst the plans have attracted criticism, the Daily Telegraph welcomed the Coalition’s hard-headed approach to these “otiose adornments to public life.” The paper commented, “Farewell, then, to the Pesticides Residue Committee and good riddance to the Advisory Committee on Packaging. Governments of every stripe have for decades promised a bonfire of the quangos, and yet these costly (and usually pointless) bodies have continued to proliferate. At long last, however, we can see some flames.”
