Quasi-autonomous non-Governmental Organisations (QUANGOS) have been part of the UK public sector for many decades and there are often robust political and managerial debates about the usefulness (or otherwise) of these public bodies. This has been brought into focus recently by the atrocious state of Government finances in the UK and the need for the next Government (whoever it may be) to make real terms reductions of public expenditure in excess of £100 billion.

Not surprisingly when there are threats to front line pubic services such as schools and hospitals many will question whether we really need the large range of QUANGOS which currently exist and also whether we can afford them in the current economic and fiscal climate.

A well-researched document recently produced by the Taxpayers Alliance claimed that in the UK there were a total of 1162 QUANGOS and other agencies which cost the taxpayer a total of £63.5 billion. These figures seem to chime with similar figures used by David Cameron in a recent speech but differ markedly from other claims which put total QUANGO expenditure at £14 billion.

This brings us to the first issue of what do we really mean by a QUANGO. For example, the figure of £124 billion includes in its list of QUANGOS all of the NHS Trusts in the UK which deliver hospital and community services. Few would regard NHS Trusts as being QUANGOS in the usual meaning of the world. Even the TPA report includes in its list of QUANGOS the following organisations:-

• The British Museum
• The BBC
• Kew Gardens
• The National Library for Wales

I am not sure many people would regard since high profile and well known organisations as QUANGOS.

Perhaps QUANGOS can be considered in four main groups:-

• Service providers – some QUANGOS such as the British Museum provide services directly to the general public.
• Funders – some QUANGOS distribute public funds to relevant external organisations. Thus the Arts Councils distribute funds to arts projects and the Higher education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) distributes funds to universities for teaching and research. So it is misleading (as the TPA report does) to claim that HEFCE spends £7billion per annum. The vast bulk of that money, with the exception of £20million for internal administrative costs, is distributed to universities for teaching and research. Also in this category might be included Regional Development Agencies.
• Regulators and Inspectors – some QUANGOS are charged with inspecting and regulating public sector service providers. Thus OFSTED inspects schools and the Healthcare commission inspects hospitals. The Audit Commission audits and inspects a range of public bodies. Also in this category might be included QUANGOS such as the Equalities commission.
• Advisors – there are a myriad of bodies of varying size which provide advisory services to various parts of Government.

There are many questions which will continue to be asked about QUANGOS. These include:-

• What benefit do they actually produce? For example, have schools really improved as a result of OFSTED? Have inequalities really reduced as a consequence of the Equalities Commission? The evidence is often thin. Also the activities of such inspection QUANGOS often place great burdens on the public bodies being inspected.
• Could their work be done by other existing organisations? For example, many of the roles of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) in funding post-16 education used to be done by local authorities. Also, much economic work is done by local authorities as well as RDAs. Do we therefore need these QUANGOS when local authorities might do the same work for less?
• What public accountability is there for the work of QUANGOS? The Boards of QUANGOS are not elected but appointed by Ministers who seem to closely control what they do in some detail.
• Why are so many QUANGOS based in London when their wok could be just as easily done in other parts of the UK?
• Are there too many QUANGOS? For example do we need a QUANGO to fund higher education (HEFCE) and a QUANGO to fund post 16 education (LSC)?
• Are QUANGOS just devices for Ministers to reduce civil service head count and to avoid direct responsibility?

Overall, the future of QUANGOS probably depends on how much time and energy Ministers can devote to the issue given the vast problems which will face the next Government. Some savings can probably be squeezed out of the QUANGO system but it is probably much less than currently imagined.

Find out more

Malcolm appeared on BBC One's The Politics Show talking about QUANGOs on November 8th

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As the recession deepens righteous anger grows about the systemic greed and unbridled power of the few at the top. Once again people are starting to make connections between their own vulnerability and the exploitative, unequal nature of the capitalist system. A sign of the times here is the launch of the No2EU, Yes to Democracy campaign which is fielding a platform of left candidates in the forthcoming European elections. Opposed to the Lisbon Treaty, with its charter for privatisation and subversion of workers’ rights, the campaign stands for a democratic Europe built on principles of social justice.

rather than opposing the capitalist system they saw the enemy as ‘universalism’

What is interesting about No2EU is the way it poses a challenge to the identity (and post-identity) politics which have become so significant in oppositional thinking for the last quarter century or more. For many radicals the neo-liberal impasse of Thatcherism encouraged a re-evaluation of what progressive politics should be about. Rather than opposing the capitalist system – which looked increasingly impregnable – they saw the enemy as ‘universalism’, of which there were left versions as well as right. Feminism provides the case in point. Launched in the 1960s and 70s, the ‘second wave’ of feminism demanded recognition for women as women, not as women who were adjunct members of the working class. The same was true of black power, and the gay, lesbian and bisexual movements. This new types of identity politics asserted the difference of political subjects against monolithic and exclusive definitions of what it is to be human.

Although these movements were still strongly aligned with the traditional left and the critique of capitalism in the 1970s, a decade later identity politics were becoming increasingly disconnected from socialism. By the late 1990s the new social movements, as they were now called, were strongly libertarian, pluralist and suspicious of any kind of unifying principle concerning what radical politics might be for. The anti-globalisation protests and the series of World Social Forums (WSF) which emerged from them in the 2000s show this very well. Indeed, the collapse of the WSF over the last few years suggests that the strong emphasis on identity, autonomy and plurality has been self-defeating. With no general goals, or programme for achieving them, the new social movements seem to have lost their way.

Still, the demands for recognition and autonomy which drove the new radical politics back in the 70s have not gone away. The challenge now must be to integrate them with the demands of the labour movement. That’s where No2EU, Yes to Democracy comes in. Simultaneously an attack on BNP far right nationalism and the pseudo-cosmopolitanism of the EU, the campaign calls for a Europe where workers’ rights are protected and public services are enhanced rather than cut back and privatised.

The recent strikes at the Lindsey oil refinery suggest that a crucial negotiation has to made here; between the principle of recognising others, in this context workers of other nationalities within the EU, and the need to defend pay and conditions which have been struggled for over many years. The right approach is surely not to say that one simply trumps the other, that the recognition of identity is more important than economic equality or vice versa. Rather it is to show how capitalism conveniently appeals to the recognition of difference (‘workers of whatever nationality have the right to work anywhere in Europe’) while exploiting difference as means of driving down wages across Europe in a race to the bottom. At Lindsey it was workers from impoverished southern Italy who were contracted for well below union negotiated rates.

All this suggests that reconciling difference and identity with demands for social justice is going to involve, above all, the exposure of pernicious ideology. But that’s nothing new. Perhaps two thirds of the struggle of radicals has always consisted in refuting lies and ‘telling truth to power’ as Edward Said once put it.

About the author

Jason Toynbee is Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at The Open University. His research interests are in creativity, copyright, and ethnicity - mainly through music - and his new book, Bob Marley: Herald of a Postcolonial World? is just out.

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Cricket has been in the news. The move of the IPL (Indian Premier League) to South Africa after the attacks on the Sri Lanka team in Lahore is clearly a big news story on the international politics pages as well as, if not more so, than on the sports pages. The future of the IPL is crucial to the economic survival of the sport; a key matter in these times of economic recession and decline in sports sponsorship. These worrying times mean that news of success in sport is even more welcome.

The most successful cricket story for English cricket fans in recent weeks might, or should have been, England winning the world cup -no not the England men’s team, but the women’s team, beating New Zealand by four wickets to win the ICC Women’s World Cup in March 2009.

Yes, there was media coverage (the six best games were broadcast to 100 countries world wide) and even interviews with captain Charlotte Edwards on BBC radio sports programmes and not just Woman’s Hour. Even cricket fans might have trouble naming the members of the team though. What’s happening here-or not happening for women’s sport? It’s not just that we can’t name the team; we don’t really know anything about the players even if we do their names.

Women’s games do get a bit more coverage now, if nowhere near as much as men’s cricket, but that’s the only reason the sporting public are not as engaged with women’s sport as they are with men’s. Sport generates its own meanings and what happens on the pitch or in the field matters, but why are the fans not so gripped by the tensions and excitement of women’s sport? Success in competition provides a great impetus for creating wider interest; think of the 2005 Ashes series and the great boost given to English men’s cricket by their success. Success can go a long way towards encouraging young people to play, although the resource problem applies to men’s and women’s cricket, but tradition means the situation is worse for the women’s game. However, the increased interest in men’s cricket after 2005 came partly from the increased coverage of cricketers off the pitch as well as on.

Although sport is enmeshed with popular culture, which is often seen as a female terrain of interest in celebrity, we read more of the feelings and inner lives of male cricketers than female. Kevin Pietersen’s anxieties about being away from home and on losing the captaincy almost get more coverage than his competence on the pitch.

This is not a superficial point. The women’s team are not represented as complex real people in the terrain of popular culture which means that the success of the team doesn’t have the same resonance. The politics of success in sport includes a range of different materialities, of resource and of organisations and institutions, of the sport itself and how it’s played, and of culture and representation.

Media coverage is just one of the dimensions of sporting success, as I’ve argued before in this blog; visibility matters but it’s the form it takes that matters too. Visibility extends beyond ball by ball coverage (although that would be great); being in the public eye can contribute to how success is seen and understood and how much or how little those in sport can benefit from success on the field.

About the author

Kath Woodward is Profesor of Sociology at the Open University, focusing on gendered identities. She has recently completed research into anti-racist organisations in sport.

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