UK spends £125m on salaries for quangocrats as waste spirals

There are nearly 300 individuals in Britain serving on the board of multiple taxpayer-funded quangos, it has been revealed in new research aimed at exposing waste. The Taxpayers' Alliance think tank has lifted the lid on Britain's so-called 'quangocracy', in which swathes of powers have been transferred from democratically elected politicians to costly arms-length bodies.

The new investigation - Britain's Quangos Uncovered - has revealed that 285 Britons currently sit on multiple boards, drawing multiple salaries. The worst offender, Martin Spencer, sits on a whopping nine quango boards, however missed nearly one in three of their total meetings between 2022 and 2023. This included being a non-executive board member, director, or commissioner for the following organisations: Ofsted, the Civil Service Commission, Companies House, the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, the Education and Skills Funding Agency, the Legal Ombudsman, NHS Counter Fraud Authority, and Submarine Delivery Agency.

The chairman of Network Rail, Peter Hendy, stands out as the highest remunerated of any board member, raking in £316,000 a year.

The think tank has calculated that the 4,605 board positions across Britain's 398 quangos are now costing the taxpayer over £125 million in salaries alone.

The number of cushty taxpayer-funded jobs has also risen by 6% since 2019, when the data was last compiled.

Appointees to these important jobs often face little scrutiny from politicians or the media, despite enjoying luxurious incomes.

Of the 285 individuals sitting on multiple boards, 246 sat on two; 31 on three; five on four' one on six; and Mr Spencer taking home the prize for sitting on nine.

John O'Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "It's never been more important that Britain's quangos are uncovered, to ensure that they are genuinely delivering a necessary service which cannot or should not be provided under direct ministerial control."

"The massive expansion of the quango state is clear from the thousands of board members that oversee them. These are often unknown figures running bodies that most have never heard of, but which hold significant control of taxpayers' money."The government needs to ensure that any bonfire of the quangos is more than just a smokescreen and leads to the abolition of unnecessary functions, as well as bringing decision-making under democratic control and reducing bureaucratic duplication."

Keir Starmer has said he would like to reduce the role and size of quangos in Britain, and got off to a strong start buy culling NHS England, the largest of them all.

In March the Prime Minister told his cabinet that they should stop "outsourcing" decisions to regulators and quangos and begin taking greater responsibility.

He said they "must go further and faster to reform the state, to deliver a strong, agile and active state that delivers for working people".

Sir Keir said departments must all take responsibility for major decisions "rather than outsourcing them to regulators and bodies as had become the trend under the previous government".

It comes amid an effort by the Government to slash the cost of the state, with large-scale cuts to the size of the civil service ordered.

However despite the rhetoric Labour has simultaneously set up 14 new public sector bodies to run critical areas of policy, including GB Energy, Skills England, National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, the Passenger Standards Authority, the Regulatory Innovation Office, the National Jobs and Careers Service and the Independent Football regulator.