How many quangos are there

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Advance article alerts. It is hard to say. The government says a "substantial" sum, but stresses that the main purpose of the exercise is not to save money but to increase accountability.

Labour say the exercise might end up costing more than it saves, once things such as redundancy payments have been taken into account. The government has not put a figure on it.

Probably not as many as you might think from the headline figures on how many bodies are being axed, as many organisations will transfer their work back into central government or transfer it to the charitable sector.

No one, in some cases. Labour presided over a big expansion in the public sector. The Conservatives and Lib Dems accused it of effectively setting up a "quangocracy" - a tangle of self-aggrandising, free-spending organisations with little accountability and, in some cases, little real purpose. But all governments have found it useful to set up arms-length bodies which operate independently from ministers.

The coalition has already set up a few quangos of its own, including the Office for Budget Responsibility. They bring a degree of independence, offer expertise - and government can pass the buck when things go wrong.

A good fall-guy example is the National Institute for Clinical Excellence NICE which frequently comes in for fierce criticism over its decisions on what drugs to fund. Dan Lewis, research director at the Economic Research Council and author of the Essential Guide to British Quangos , says they have a long history.

The first one - Trinity House, the lighthouse service - was set up in DATA: download the full list as a spreadsheet. Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group or mail us at datastore guardian. Turn autoplay off Turn autoplay on. Jump to content [s] Jump to comments [c] Jump to site navigation [0] Jump to search [4] Terms and conditions [8]. Quangos got a bad name in the s as a result of abuse of patronage by the then government and the absence of systematic mechanisms to secure their accountability.

But quangos are often essential or valuable bodies. There is a great variety of quangos in the UK. A host of other bodies, for example, advise government on the safety of medicines or the quality of air, or run museums, direct research programmes, recommend wines for government functions, etc. Until the mids, ministers and senior civil servants were solely responsible for appointing members to quangos and other public bodies. As recommended by the Nolan Committee on standards in public life, a Commissioner for Public Appointments regulates appointments to quangos.

A special commission now oversees the whole appointments processes within the NHS. However, ministers retain the final say over who is appointed.

The Prime Minister also has wide-ranging powers of patronage within the quango state. Very significantly, appointments to most local quangos are not regulated at all, other than those to NHS bodies, and these tend to be filled by word of mouth within business, political and other networks. The existence and variety of quangos — at national, regional and local levels -raises a number of democratic issues Are the government and devolved administrations open about the whole range of such bodies and the people who are appointed to them?

Are these bodies of appointed people made properly accountable to government and the public? Are these bodies of appointed people open to the public and to public and scrutiny of their policies, actions and finances? Do ministers and civil servants maintain effective oversight of the activities of the quangos attached to their departments? Do local authorities have any say in the policies and actions of quangos in their areas, or any oversight of the appointments processes?

Are the functions and services for which quangos are responsible properly the preserve of appointed rather than elected boards?