James Wild
Main Page: James Wild (Conservative - North West Norfolk)Department Debates - View all James Wild's debates with the Cabinet Office
(1 day, 15 hours ago)
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James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman talks a good game about scrapping quangos and I support the review he announced to reduce the size of the bureaucratic state. Why then, despite the rhetoric, are the Government at the same time creating dozens of new quangos?
Pat McFadden
This is another debate, which has gone on for many years and relates to the question of headcount—Governments can magically reduce headcount by creating a quango somewhere, but the headcount may not have changed at all. What is informing the drive this time is the fiction that an arm’s length body can somehow absolve Ministers of responsibility. It does not work like that in the real world. Sometimes there is a good case for having an arm’s length body, but in the end, we know that accountability will be with Ministers, and that is what is informing how we look at these things at the moment.