TASK IV Name the issues raised in the article

“Quangos”

Many of the day-to-day services to the public that used to be administered by bodies on which representatives of the public served have been hived off to independent agencies on the ground that they would become more efficient when exposed to the disciplines of the market. The managing bodies are staffed by appointees rather than representatives.

The term quango (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization) is conveniently used to describe non-elected public bodies that operate outside the civil service and that are funded by the taxpayer.

They include NHS trusts, grant-maintained schools, further education colleges, urban development corporations, training and enterprise councils, and a wide variety of other bodies.

Government prefers to use the term non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs), which includes only public bodies in the formal sense. It does not cover bodies that in legal terms are private enterprises, even if they are spending public money. Government divides these bodies into executive NDPBs and advisory NDPBs. Another term used by government is “appointed Executive bodies”.

As a result of this difference in definition, estimates of the number of quangos in existence in the 1990s vary from 2,000 to 5,000 and estimates of the amount of money spent annually also vary widely.

When a new labour government came to power in 1997 it committed itself to reducing the number of NDPBs, but as follows from the report of the all-party parliamentary select committee on public administration, there was “unprecedented eruption” of advisory quangos in the first 18 months of the new government when ministers established 295 “task forces” to give policy advice on a wide range of issues. The committee said it was disappointed at the low priority attached to public access to executive NDPBs, commenting, “There are more black holes than examples of open governance”.

Before the rapid increase on quangos in the 1980s and 1990s, it was generally accepted that the bodies that then had corresponding duties were accountable to the public and should provide information about their activities to the public. Many of them – for example, the old water authorities but not the new water companies – were required to admit the press to their meetings. They were generally required to provide documentation.

The argument of accountability no longer applies in the same way. Demands for information can be countered by the argument that the body cannot operate in market conditions when the details of its operations are known to its competitors. Public access to information would therefore work against normal commercial confidentiality.

The minister in charge of the water companies justified the clamp-down on public access by saying these companies were no longer operating like public corporations but more like private bodies under the Companies Act, with executive and business responsibilities.

TASK V If you were a Member of Parliament would you approve or reject each of the following Current reforms, give your reasons:

The present government has attempted to findan accommodation between liberal and communitarian ideas in the form of a package of constitutional reforms. They comprise the following:

• attempts to disperse democratic mechanisms more widely by creating devolved governments falling short of a federal system elected partly by proportional representation in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

• attempts to strengthen individual rights by enacting some of the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights but not so as to override the traditional doctrine of Parliamentary supremacy (Human Rights Act 1998).

• proposals to introduce a Freedom of Information Act which will give the public a limited right to see some government documents.

• reforms to the House of Lords which will remove the rights of hereditary peers to sit in the Lords, although no decision has yet been made as to what will replace them or what the role of the second chamber will be.

• reforms to local government in the form of a smaller and more focused executive responsible to an elected assembly instead of the corporate structure that exists today

These reforms are a familiar catalogue of matters that have been on the agenda for many years. They have been criticised as lacking a coherent framework. However they seem to be driven by the aim of providing a range of mechanisms, 'multi-layered democracy', that allows different interests and different values to be put into the public arena.

TASK VI a) Read the text; express your opinion about the standards discussed;

---

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14