TUC Conference: Conservatives 'use quangos to side-step democracy'
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Your support makes all the difference.SPENDING by quangos has increased from just over pounds 5bn in 1979 to pounds 46.7bn a year, and there are now more than twice as many government appointees as elected councillors, the TUC conference was told yesterday.
Unions unanimously deplored the 'explosive growth' in quangos and promised to take every opportunity to expose 'the cost and undemocratic nature of these bodies and the increasingly autocratic and secretive manner in which they exercise their powers'.
But Richard Rosser, general secretary of the railway staff union TSSA, said the quangos scandal had reached the proportions of 'a major outrage'. Sixty-three thousand government appointees sit on more than 5,500 bodies to implement government policies that had been rejected by voters in council elections.
'Appointments are made on a highly partisan basis,' he told delegates. 'One quango chairman was appointed following a pheasant shoot with a government minister. Only 24 out of 10,000 quango appointments in 1992 were even advertised.'
Of 185 chairs of national health trusts, 62 were former Conservative councillors or MPs, Tory party employees or spouses of prominent Conservatives. Most of the rest were either members or supporters of the party since they were nearly all company directors and other businessmen and women.
The responsibilities and budgets of elected local authorities are being transferred to quangos and the gap between the budget of councils and that of quangos was closing fast.
Mr Rosser went on: 'The Conservatives have used quangos to side-step the democratic wishes of the electorate. In Wales, the voters have ensured that none of the county councils are controlled by Conservatives. So the Government sticks two fingers up at the democratic process, sets up quangos, puts in its friends and transfers powers from the local authorities to those quangos - some of which have unique ways of conducting their financial affairs.
'We are not talking here about minor partisan politics. We are talking about blatant political corruption.'
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