Chainsaw candidates
An incoming UK government might take a leaf from the chainsaws of Javier Milei and Elon Musk. A government intent on major institutional pruning would focus on bodies seen to be duplicative, inefficient, bloated, poorly performing, or no longer suited to modern needs. =
Successive governments have criticized the sheer number of Quangos (quasi-autonomous organizations), including regulatory bodies (e.g., overlapping environmental, education, transport, or communications regulators), advisory commissions with limited statutory roles, and legacy agencies created for one-off historical needs
Candidates for the chainsaw might include some of the following, for the reasons given:
Supreme Court. Revert to Law Lords considering only legal, not Ministerial or Constitutional matters
OBR. Its inaccurate productivity forecasts, perceived lack of true independence from the Treasury, and the political implications of its forecasts.
OFT. Its handling of specific cases, such as a judge criticizing the tone of a press release and a high-profile case collapse, which raised questions about its investigative and prosecutorial credibility.
OFCOM. The Online Safety Act (OSA), with concerns about its impact on free speech, user privacy, and potential for over-censorship.
BBC. Political bias, which has a leftist slant not reflective of the whole country, particularly when it comes to issues like transgender rights and coverage of US politics and conflicts like the Israel-Gaza war.
FCA. The Blackman report said “the FCA is seen as incompetent at best, dishonest at worst. Its actions are slow and inadequate, its leaders opaque and unaccountable.”
Other institutions might include the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the Care Quality Commission (CQC), and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Further examples include the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual), the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), and various professional and healthcare regulators like the General Medical Council (GMC) and the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).
To these might be added the Environment Agency and the Office for Environmental Protection, research organizations such as the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS).
Historic England and Natural England are also among bodies seen to obstruct and delay development and, like many of the above, act to restrict growth.
In 1979 the Adam Smith Institute highlighted the growing trend of unelected bodies with extra-parliamentary powers in its publication, ‘Quango, Quango, Quango.’ It listed 3,068 such bodies, prompting Margaret Thatcher to conduct a survey. This resulted in over 600 of them being abolished. Some argue that it might now be time for an incoming government to take a chainsaw to some of those that have proliferated since then.
Madsen Pirie