At last the full facts about our burgeoning quango state are laid bare. The conclusion of a report published today by the TaxPayers’ Alliance is that it’s “big, bloated and more expensive than ever before.”
The TPA document provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date listing available of all 1,152 ‘semi-autonomous public bodies’ operating in the UK, along with details of how many staff each employs and how much they spend. More than £90 billion of taxpayers’ money was spent on or channelled through quangos/SAPBs in 2007-8 (up £13 billion on the year before). That’s equivalent to £3,640 for every household in the land.
The report’s authors say these facts have been kept hidden from Parliament and the public by the government’s habit of issuing ‘confusing and incomplete statistics’. At a time when big savings have to be made, the true facts need to be uncovered.
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