An exception to this and a valuable attempt to advance the whole debate is the Outer Circle Policy Unit Report, What's Wrong with Quangos, 1980.
2.
Report on Non-Departmental Public bodies, Cmnd. 7797, 1980. Sir Leo Pliatzky was formerly Permanent Secretary at the Treasury and Department of Trade.
3.
See, SmithB. L. R. and HagueD. C. (eds.), The Dilemma of Accountability in Modern Government, Macmillan, 1971, for some American descriptions of contract organisations.
4.
Christopher Hood in a paper prepared for the annual conference of the Public Administration Committee of the Joint University Council for Social and Public Administration, September 1979.
5.
Christopher Hood in a paper prepared for the annual conference of the Public Administration Committee of the Joint University Council for Social and Public Administration, September 1979.
6.
Bowen's survey for CSD, in 1976, examined 280 bodies employing 184,000 people and costing £2367 million. Directory of Paid Public Appointments, in 1977, listed 300 organisations involving a total of 5000 paid appointments of which only a small proportion were full-time. The Pliatzky Report revealed 489 executive bodies with 217,000 staff spending £5800 million and costing a further £24m in departmental sponsorship; 1561 advisory bodies costing £13 million and 67 ‘tribunal systems’, i.e. networks of tribunals costing £30 million. Holland, in his publication Quango, Quango, Quango, in 1979, listed 3000 bodies with 9633 paid appointments and 30,890 unpaid costing £7285 million.
7.
The major executive bodies as defined in the report Pliatzky'sTop Twenty remained intact, although undoubtedly to be affected by the Government's limits on public expenditure and desire to sell off public sector assets.
8.
“However, though the review of non-departmental bodies has been designed to complement the public expenditure and staff exercises in securing the administrative economies, that has not been its only purpose.” Ibid., p.4.
9.
See The Guardian, 15 September 1979.
10.
See The Guardian, 13 March 1980.
11.
Report of the Committee on the Civil Service, Cmnd. 3638, 1968.
12.
“Hiving off and Departmental Agencies”, by JordanGrant in Public Administration Bulletin Number 21, indicates the extent of internal departmental delegation within Whitehall.
13.
See, for example, KeelingD., Management in Government, Allen and Unwin, 1972.
14.
E.g., Royal Commission on Local Government in England, Cmnd. 4039, 1968; Committee on the Civil Service, Cmnd. 1968; ‘The Reorganisation of Central Government’, Cmnd. 3406, 1970; Royal Commission on the Constitution, Cmnd. 5460, 1973.
15.
See the Daily Mail, 27 August 1979.
16.
See The Observer, 23 September 1979.
17.
See DaviesAnne in The Guardian, 25 February 1980.
18.
See The Guardian, 26 June 1979.
19.
See, for example, FinerS. E., “The Individual Responsibility of Ministers”, in Public Administration 34, 1956; GunnL. A., “Politicians and Officials: Who is Answerable?”, Political Quarterly 43, 1972; or JohnsonN., In Search of the Constitution, Pergamon, 1977.
20.
HagueD. C., MackenzieW. J. M. and BarkerA, Public Policy and Private Interests, Macmillan, 1975.
21.
Here an apparent lack of supervision by the responsible government departments contributed to a situation whereby the Agents developed major interests in property and fringe banking activities which produced substantial losses and an emergency loan from government. See the Fay Report — Report by the Committee of Inquiry — House of Commons paper, 1 December 1977.
22.
These issues are raised in more detail in another paper by the present writers — The ODA and Non-Departmental Public Bodies in the Field of Educational Aid — specifically based on the research project.
