Less than a year ago, tens of millions of Brits went to the polls. Whether they cast their ballot in a primary school, a church or community centre, they used their power as a voter to signal whether they were willing to give the Conservatives another chance or whether they preferred change.
Whoever they voted for, they did so in the expectation that the men and women they were sending to the hallowed halls of parliament would have the authority to deliver on their promises, even if - as we all know - they frequently break them. That’s certainly what Labour MPs must have thought entering that grand testament to British democracy.
How different reality is. Because, as readers will no doubt have picked up on, the British state is not governed by elected MPs, not anymore. Power is in the hands of bureaucrats, lawyers, activists, judges, charities, and pretty much anyone else provided they were never voted for. And most significantly, the British state is governed by the vast quangocracy that has been created and empowered by successive governments, sometimes by accident, sometimes by design.
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Well we know that taxpayers are fed up. They send MPs to Westminster to govern and to legislate, not simply act as spluttering spokespeople for a network of overpaid bureaucrats. It’s time to take back control, to coin a phrase. That’s why we’ve launched Britain’s Quangos Uncovered, our new project lifting the lid on the quango-state.
To say we launched with a bang would be an understatement. Just this week we’ve released hard-hitting research (more on that in a moment), multiple blogs and op-eds, trekked from one broadcast studio to another and dominated social media with our punchy digital content. All of our content so far can be found here.
As Elliot Keck, our head of campaigns, put it in a piece for The Critic launching the project, this will be  “a full scale exposé of the quangocracy that will go beyond spin and into the nitty gritty of these organisations: who they are, what they cost, why they exist and what should be done about them.”
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Following this up, our media campaign manager William Yarwood popped up in the GB News studio with Matthew Goodwin to hammer home the point that who governs Britain is not MPs, its “people in backroom offices, in quangos, which are making the real decisions that people care about.”
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There’s going to be a lot more of this to come. Even Labour are realising the nightmare they are facing - their ministers have come to power on a promise of change, yet they are pulling levers only for nothing to happen.
It’s time to take back control, but first we need to uncover the scale of the problem. It’s time for Britain’s quangos to be uncovered.
This project won’t be possible without your support. Please click here to donate.
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It wouldn’t be a new TPA campaign without some number-crunching, and the TPA researchers duly obliged with some fascinating - if troubling - findings.
Digging into annual accounts stacked up a mile high, they’ve created a list of the board members of all of Britain’s quangos, and they’ve identified a total of 4,605 including 285 who sit on multiple. One board member, Martin Spencer, sat on a remarkable nine boards, taking home £145,000 in remuneration, yet missing 28 per cent of the meetings.
The total cost of these board members? An eye-watering ÂŁ125.8 million.
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The man behind the research, the TPA’s own Shimeon Lee, jumped in front of a camera to give the low-down on these findings. As Shimeon says, “many of these quangos you will never even have heard of, but they still hand out these appointments without scrutiny year after year… This isn’t accountability, it’s public appointment merry-go-round.” Shimeon also wrote a corker of an op-ed for our friends at CapX, which you can read here. Or our head of research, Darwin Friend, talking to Talk’s Julia Hartley-Brewer about the research.
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This is just scratching the surface. Over the coming weeks our research and investigation teams will be revealing the quangocrats working from abroad, the top paid bosses at these organisations and much more. Make sure you tune in.
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If that’s still not enough on Britain’s quangocracy, our podcast host Duncan Barkes had a fascinating chinwag with Elliot and James Price, formerly of this parish, about Britain’s quangocracy. James was just the man to hear from, given his significant experience in government working as a special adviser.Â
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James made a strong case for restoring power back to ministers and central government departments, arguing “at least if the power was inside the government departments themselves, a really strong and determined minister could wrestle some kind of activity.” Listen to the full episode of A Nation of Taxpayers on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
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Living up to our promise that this project will be more than just complaining, it will involve concrete solutions, Elliot put pen to paper on what should be done about the mess that is the UK’s driving test system. Recent data revealed that despite Labour ministers making this a priority, waiting times have actually got worse, averaging over 20 weeks. And who is responsible for driving tests? Why a quango - the DVSA to be precise.
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As Elliot put it: “Hand this power over to say four or five private companies, with clear and concise expectations on what should be delivered and this would be solved in just weeks. The DVSA could then be entirely abolished, with any residual functions incorporated into the Department for Transport.”
Give it a read here.
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Don’t forget about the debt
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While our focus is going to be on Britain’s quangocracy over the coming weeks, this is just one of many crippling issues this country faces. And just this week it was revealed that in 2024/25 Britain borrowed £15 billion more than expected. As the TPA’s Atlanta Neudorf put it in a blog: “It adds insult to the injury of the brutal tax raids announced in the Autumn Budget, with public sector spending far outstripping the government’s tax receipts.”
No wonder our debt clock reveals that the national debt now stands at well over ÂŁ2.8 trillion - enough to fully fund the NHS for 16 years!
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Benjamin Elks
Grassroots Development Manager
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