Quangos must abide by the law and be open about how they're spending our money – Scotsman comment

Scores of quangos have fallen foul of legislation designed to improve transparency in the public sector, The Scotsman's investigation has found.

A Scotsman investigation has established that 66 out of 114 quangos failed to publish financial information as required by law

Quangos are deliberately designed to be at an arm's length from government and political interference. In many cases, that makes perfect sense and, while often derided, ‘quasi-autonomous, non-governmental organisations’ can do a good job. However, when such organisations appear to be hiding or, more charitably, forgetting to tell the public what they are doing with taxpayers’ money, it raises extremely serious concerns.

An investigation by The Scotsman has established that 66 out of 114 quangos failed to publish financial information in accordance with the law, specifically the 2010 Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act. This comes on top of our previous revelations that quangos spend at least £120 million a year on public relations and external consultancy costs – at a time when public spending is under severe pressure – and that some top executives are paid more than the limit set out in the public sector pay strategy.

Our investigations correspondent, Martyn McLaughlin, pointed out that it “ought to have been a straightforward story to report”. Instead, establishing how Scotland’s quangos are using taxpayers’ money turned into “a slog, requiring over 300 emails, numerous phone calls, and more than the occasional polite reminder that the disclosure of such information is not a courtesy, but a legal requirement”.

A quango with nothing to hide should be more than happy to be transparent about its spending. And all should, as a matter of course, be abiding by the law. If it is so easy to flout legal requirements about reporting spending and public sector pay rules, what else is going wrong?

Skulking about in the shadows invites attention and suspicion, so quangos wishing to demonstrate they are operating in an above board way should rush into the spotlight. Rather than simply asking the public to trust them, those that have fallen out of the habit of reporting their spending in the correct way must remedy the situation with considerable urgency.

Any that fail to do so should be reminded by the politicians to whom they ultimately report that ‘arm’s length’ does not mean ‘out of reach’ – and the arm of the law is long.

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