Tories threaten to axe quangos

Comments by David Willetts, shadow secretary for universities and skills, add to the increasingly loud cries from Westminster in recent months for a "bonfire of the quangos".

Policy radicalism

Observers say quango-slaying has become similar to welfare-to-work: an area where both main parties fundamentally agree, but on which they are striving to outdo each other in rhetoric and policy radicalism.

Lord Mandelson, Labour's business secretary, called last week for a reduction in the number of government agencies in skills and education. He was building on a recent call for their dissolution by the Commission for Employment and Skills, itself a quango.

Willetts was referring specifically to the quangos that supervise further education colleges. He told the annual Association of Colleges conference: "Our ultimate goal is one funding body, one audit regime and one improvement body."

Clarifying his comments at a press conference after his speech, Willetts singled out the Young People's Learning Agency, which aims to monitor the provision of further education by local authorities, as a candidate for eradication.

This illustrates the constant flux of the government's skills regime, since the shadow minister has earmarked the YPLA for abolition even before it comes into existence next spring. Few experts are willing to hazard a guess about the precise number of agencies supervising higher education, but most suggest they run into the tens.

"Every college principal I meet tells me they have literally dozens of staff whose job is to collect data for a multiplicity of regulators and funding bodies, which is not needed for the good management of the college," Willetts said. "Under our model, much of this can be swept away. Tough times lie ahead. This is where the savings have to be made."

— Financial Times