QUANGO AXE LIST

The Daily Telegraph has done it again! After its leaked lists of MPs expenses last year it has now got its hands on the government's proposals for quango-axing which show that 180 are already destined for the chop, 94 are still under review and 350 will be saved. Astonishingly the BBC World Service and the British Council are among organisations in the “under review” column.

I had never thought of either of them as “quangos” -- indeed they predate that unlovely word by half a century and both do great work in projecting British values throughout the world. The Council may still be thought of as promoting Morris Dancing but in fact its leading task nowadays is the promotion of English as a second language.

I can't pretend to know just what the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee did but, as with so many of these quangos, I suspect that it brought together experts in its field who advised the relevant government department on policy. Now all the work will either have to be returned to less expert civil servants, who are being cut also, or just abandoned.

Running down the list of 180 doomed organisations is a depressing experience as one sees the way in which the government is going to cut itself off from good, even essential, independent advice on matters affecting many aspects of national life, from disabled transport provision to human fertilisation and embryology.