How Scotland's 'invisible' quangos drain money from vital public services like the police
It’s high time for a thorough audit of the effectiveness of Scotland’s 133 quangos
When working as chair of the Scottish Police Federation, David Hamilton represented thousands of officers from constables to chief inspectors. So it’s fair to say he will have a good idea about the importance of key public services and the considerable pressures they are under.
Asked what had surprised him since becoming Scottish Information Commissioner in 2023 by BBC Scotland’s Scotcast, Hamilton cited the “staggering” number of public sector agencies that “I never even knew existed”.
“I don't actually know what a lot of them do. I'm sure they've got something. But there's a kind of invisibility that sits there,” he said. “I sometimes think, 'What on Earth does this organisation do, and how does that make anyone's life better?' I don't know.”
In total, Scotland has 133 devolved public bodies, aka quangos, and it’s high time for a thorough audit of their effectiveness followed by abolition, amalgamation or absorption into government of many.
Maintaining such a bloated bureaucracy, full of bodies hardly anyone has heard of because they have such little impact, at a time when frontline services like the police are really struggling makes no sense whatsoever.
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